From Publishers Weekly
American universities are the envy of the world, but they may be on the brink of discarding the very values and practices that have made them so successful, argues journalist Washburn, as secretive connections between private industry and the academy have begun to "undermine the foundation of public trust on which all universities depend." Washburn has a muckraker's keen eye for scandals and coverups; her examples of academic research suppressed in the name of corporate profits will startle readers. Not content with merely drawing back the curtains on the sordid world of the increasingly revenue-centered university, Washburn argues that the recent partnerships between schools and businesses rarely generate the financial windfall that they promise, leaving educational institutions and state legislatures with strapped resources and hollow rhetoric about creating the next Silicon Valley. While this focus on job creation (or the lack thereof) is the least sensational element of the book, it is the most timely and important, and Washburn's coup de grace is to show that even private industrial leaders and economic pragmatists like Alan Greenspan have begun to criticize the decline of traditional liberal arts education and the rise of the corporate university as economically and socially disastrous. Washburn offers a few modest and thoughtful prescriptions for saving higher education, but this book is more likely to be read for the illnesses it lucidly diagnoses. (Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Reviews
"A heartfelt, well-documented expose of a major rip-off that debases education in several important ways."

Mark Edmundson, author of Teacher and Why Read?
"Jennifer Washburn has written a provocative, timely, deeply researched book about the ongoing corporate take-over of universities."

Marcia Angell, author of The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to do About It
"Washburn has done a splendid job of marshalling the evidence for this disturbing indictment."

Book Description
How the emerging alliance between the worlds of academia and business puts our universities at risk and how this union will affect us all. Our federal and state tax dollars are going to fund higher education. If corporations kick in a little more, should they be able to dictate the research or own the discoveries? During the past two decades, commercial forces have quietly transformed virtually every aspect of academic life. Corporate funding of universities is growing and the money comes with strings attached. In return for this funding, universities and professors are acting more and more like for-profit patent factories: university funds are shifting from the humanities and the less profitable science departments into research labs, and the skill of teaching is valued less and less. Slowly but surely, universities are abandoning their traditional role as disinterested sources of education, alternative perspectives, and wisdom. This growing influence of corporations over universities affects more than just today's college students (and their parents); it compromises the future of all those whose careers depend on a university education, and all those who will be employed, governed, or taught by the products of American universities.

About the Author
Jennifer Washburn is currently a Fellow at the New America Foundation. Formerly a Fellow at the Open Society Institute and a senior research associate for the Arms Trade Resource Center of the World Policy Institute at the New School for Social Research, Ms. Washburn writes for The Atlantic, The Nation, Lingua Franca, the American Prospect, and other national magazines. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Drawing on extensive interviews and original research, Jennifer Washburn paints an alarming picture of how one of America's most prized institutions - and the nation's last refuge for independent thought - is being colonized by a market ideology that is fundamentally at odds with the university's core academic values. At a time when universities try to convert professors into "content providers" and students into "consumers," when scientists neglect the long-term interests of their field in favor of short-term personal gain, and professors paid by drug manufacturers dole out lavish endorsements for new medicines, University Inc. offers a rigorous and important analysis of the deteriorating state of our higher education system today.

FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews