One of the cornerstones of the public authority proposal that Chancellor Biddy Martin has been pushing with all her might (in contrast to, say, her non-existent campaign for greater public support of the university) is the assumption that we would be able to count on greater donor contributions to patch holes in the budget.
This Bloomberg article documents how that model has worked out for other universities, and it’s not a pretty picture:
Schools Find Ayn Rand Can’t Be Shrugged as Donors Build Courses
If you support the public authority and believe that private donations will be an important source of new revenue, please explain to the rest of us how we will avoid the same fate. Or at least explain why we should embrace that fate.
Either way, it’s past time for more honesty, more facts, more figures, less wishful thinking, and fewer empty platitudes.
- GP
This is just the bald-faced continuation of how sponsored research gets molded by private funders, right?
Wow! The last sentence of this excerpt sounds eerily familiar. Where have I heard that kind of thing before?? Hmmm.
“The essay also lashes out at the demands attached to Munk’s gift. Among the 23 requirements, the university must stage an opening celebration for the Munk school and hire a media tracking service to evaluate its branding strategy.
The professors were especially incensed at the rule that said lower-level staff will not be allowed to use the front entrance of the building, which they say violates the social norms of a public university.
“The main entrance of the school, remodeled at considerable public expense, is to be restricted to ‘senior staff’ (defined how?), while everyone else, including their assistants and students and even their less-senior faculty colleagues, are to walk around to a back door!” the professors wrote.
President David Naylor posted a spirited defense of the Munk agreement on the university’s website. “Personal attacks such as those we have seen on Peter Munk are a deplorable affront to the values of rational and respectful discourse that are supposed to characterize a university,” Naylor said.”
Here’s much more on the Munk story: http://theblueandwhite.ca/article/2011/02/09/00/00/10/the-perils-of-philanthropy/