“The University of Granada launches a customized patronage plan.”
News like this is becoming more common. Cuts in public budgets for education, including higher education, are pushing universities to this type of fundraising strategy. There is no doubt that this form of intrusion by the private sector into the work of public institutions is scandalous. However, it is possible that, as
Nick Dyer-Witheford
says, we are confusing the forest with the trees:
“[… there is a risk of paying too much attention to these notorious scandals, of confusing the forest with the trees; the main issue is not the published examples of pressure on university scientific research by companies (and what is published is, we can be sure, only a fraction of the total); nor is it the involvement or even direct intervention of companies in the financing of research (in fact, university research funded by companies still represents a small portion of the total). What is remarkable is not so much that companies finance research, even though funding is a strategic and influential issue; but the fact that capital freely captures an enormous amount of socially funded knowledge, because in a system in which the means of production are private, the only way to put the fruits of scientific research into practice is through a process of commodification. ”
This paragraph is taken from the article
In the Ruined Laboratory of Futuristic Accumulation: Immaterial Labour and the University Crisis
, which we happened to be reading when we heard about the customized patronage plans. The article is published in the book