I am not sure it's a good idea to have all research break away from academia. Academic values are what they are because they (theoretically) should aid in the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake. Take that away, put research money in the hands of corporations and you have pursuit of knowledge for money. That's not cool.

My sense isn't that Sperber wants all "research" to spin away from the academy -- just the government- and corporation-funded stuff. The point is that the academy should be devoted to knowledge for knowledge's sake -- its discovery, generation, critique, and transmission -- and that the presence of the government and corporations as a font of funding complicates that mission. Spin off your applied research wings and send the money to your new (for-profit?) shops and let the academy stay pure.

Here are some potential disagreements one could have with this position:

1) The line between "pure" and "applied" research is never terribly clear. Let's take the social sciences: political scientists and economists are always trying to come up with better theoretical models and in-depth analyses of both the past and the present. In other words, these often aren't "purely" academic pursuits, but they're undeniably either academic or of special interest to the academy all the same.

1b) As a corollary to 1), a lot of the researchers you spin off are going to be super-smart people with great ideas and connections to powerful people in important places. You're going to want these people to teach a course or two. So your researchers wind up coming back as adjuncts. What's different exactly?

2) Why is it a bad thing that physics departments and medical schools get lots of money from outside sources? It's one thing if they're losing money. Is it impossible for universities to balance their educational mission with their research mission? If the administrators favor research over education too heavily, that's more likely to be an administrative failure than a structural one. Otherwise, it's just like the football team. Some schools might devote too much money and energy into something that sometimes seems peripheral to education, but other schools strike a better balance. For these schools, research money (like sports) brings in revenue that you can use to supplement academic pursuits. Take away the revenue and resources, and your pure teaching mission is suddenly a lot harder (and a lot more expensive). This is why liberal arts colleges are never cheap.

Also, what's up with Hacker's hard-on for Williams College? Nobody cares about schools like Williams or Amherst -- at least in the same way that they care about schools like Chicago, Cornell, and Berkeley (to name three schools not on his list of 12) -- except a handful of people on the east coast.

I hate to be science snarky, but Sperber clearly doesn't appreciate the finer points of science and engineering research. At all. And I think English professors should spent a lot of time hanging out in labs before they make such grand proposals. There's a lot to be said for reforming and reorganizing the way corporations and governments fund research, and how universities handle the licensing of their patents, but wholesale spinning off is ludicrous to anyone who's actually *done* some research. You cannot draw such a pure line between engineering and science. Science is done with instruments, and engineers build them. Phycists may invent such instruments, may even build the best prototypes, but it's engineers who make them really, really good. And you cannot have a good engineering school if you don't have ties to industry and government. That's just one vital process that would get cut off.

I am most amused by Tim's second comment because my Berkeley education has been drenched with Williams graduates and Swatties and even Amerherst gradates. Berkeley certainly cares about these little liberal arts schools, in as much as it can harvest graduate students from them, and it needs the graduate students to do the research and teach the undergraduates. Berkeley, of course, also harvests graduate students--a lot of graduate students--from its own ranks. It likes to mix things up. But yes, many of those graduate students found that no one else here had heard of their prestigious little school when they got here. Then again, I had to learn to stop saying "Cal" when I went to New York. Seriously, I think you need all kinds of creatures in the ecosystem, but discounting the importance of the public ivies is absurd and unrealistic. The public ivies are the workhorse of American education, and they are one of the best places for Joe Schmoe public to quickly get in touch with the best of academe. You make your own education at them. That's the kind of engineering skill Sperber might learn to respect.

Saheli, Sperber isn't talking about divorcing science & engineering, is he? He's talking about divorcing teaching & research. I'm not saying this is a good idea, but they're two different ideas, right?

You probably picked up the distinction from Tim's first point, and maybe it stands to reason that outside entities would ONLY be interested in applied science, not basic research... BUT I think some of these entities (e.g. big computer companies, big pharma, the government) might be more broad-minded about things than we think. They already have some pretty interesting relationships w/ universities today, and it's not all 'make me a missile, now!' -- some of it is very much 'well, play around with idea X, and if you come up with anything good, we'll use it.'

I disagree w/ Tim's point that all this outside money is subsidizing undergrad education. From what I understand -- and I could be way off -- outside entities generally pay for specific projects: They fund labs, equipment, experiments, surveys, whatever. They don't pay faculty salaries. So in fact what they're doing is COMPETING for faculty time w/ undergrad teaching! And from a university perspective it's generally a lot more appealing to your faculty bringing in big multi-million dollar DARPA grants than to be fiddling around with the Missile-Making 101 curriculum.

(Keep in mind I know approximately nothing about any of this & I understand that I engage in debate with actual academics, present and former, at my peril!)

Note that I didn't say that research money directly funded undergraduate education, I said it could be used "to supplement academic pursuits." Many if not most graduate students in the natural sciences get their funding by working as research assistants for gov't funded projects. When I was an undergrad, I got money for "doing research" as a PA for an NSF-funded project -- MSU dangled these jobs to attract top undergrads to the school. Also the labs and cyclotrons and whatnot that start out being built either for or by big research money usually wind up teaching the chil'ns and/or discovering the nature of the universe (as the case may be).

Again, I think the problem isn't necessarily the infusion of research money, but when decisions are made solely on the basis of a department or program's ability to sustain itself and/or bring in oodles of dough; in other words, when administrations lose their sense of priorities with respect to their academic mission. Even if it often happens, there's no reason why it has to happen.

Re: Saheli (and Robin on Saheli) I think it's Stanley Katz who proudly boasted that Princeton had no schools of engineering, business, law, or education. Having gone to a big, sports-minded public school (Michigan State), an ivory tower private school (University of Chicago) and a more business- and practically-minded ivy (University of Pennsylvania), I can say that each experience has probably been equally weird and dysfunctional in its own right. It was as strange to be on Chicago's small, paranoid campus, where no one actually made anything, as it has been to be somewhere where people mostly chased beer or money.

Your final sentence there is a keeper, Tim. What a great line!

So maybe I misunderstood Sperber's point--not surprising, since the article cites it only glancingly--but I thought it was a separation between pure knowledge and applied knowledge. And I think teaching science only in environments that are devoid of engineering (which just doesn't make any sense without research at all) is a bad, bad idea.

I also think research is a really good idea for undergraduate learning. Even the ballyhooed Williams and Amhersts have small research programs in the sciences. Far and away undergraduate research is one of the best reasons to go to a school like Berkeley. I mean, hands down. Now, I'm one of those who believe that good teaching is both symptomatic of and necessary for really good research, and that departments cough and splutter when they lose sight of good teaching. A department that cares about its undergraduates and encourages faculty to take the time to nurture them has a healthier relationship with alumni, a healthier relationship with the graduate students, and a healthier lab ecology. A department that doesn't nurture its undergraduates chokes its own seed corn and is more easily plundered of stars. So, like all things it's a balance, not an either or.

Outside money does subsidize undergraduate education through something that can loosely be described as a tax, at least at the UCs. the PI pays a chunk of the grant to the department, nominally for overhead, but the department clearly gets to spread that around a bit. This becomes obvious when you see the classrooms mathematics is taught in and compare them to the classrooms computer science is taught in.

Tim: I think I've been too thoroughly indoctrinated by Cal and even Columbia to appreciated the Princetonion boast--though I think they do, actually, have engineering departments. I've also been indoctrinated by Dyson's championship of the Gallisonion theory of science--scientific revolutions are as much technology revolutions as they are idea revolutions, and the accumulation of knowledge very much requires making stuff. I thought I would find Chicago too cold, but apparently in more ways than one! That does seem rather strange.

You're right, Saheli -- Princeton does have engineering programs at their school, but no business (apart from a Master's in Finance program), education, law, or medicine. Chicago had law, business and medical schools, but no teachers or engineers. Maybe this is why Princeton seems less creepy. (Although I don't want to downplay what Chicago does -- I really did and do think that it's one of the best schools in the country, better than it sometimes gets credit for.)

You know, it's funny, because I associate Chicago with Enrico Fermi, and I associate Fermi with the very best in harmonious experimental and theoretical physics--with, in fact, making stuff--out of ductape and shoe string and paperclips, if necessary. Then again, I guess Fermi's fly by the seat of your pants approach could be seen as the opposite of design-design engineering within the narrower category of those who accept that knowledge sometimes requires physical work.

I definitely don't mean to diss UofC, Tim, I still hold it in high esteem, despite their not giving tenure to Drezner. ;-) Like I said, the only reason I'd never go there is the COLD.