As a college student in Chapel Hill, John Allison stumbled across a collection of essays by Ayn Rand and was hooked by her philosophy of self-interest and limited government. As he rose over the decades to chief executive of BB&T, one of the country's leading regional banks, Rand remained his muse.

He's trying to replicate that encounter through the charitable arm of his Winston-Salem-based company, which since 1999 has awarded more than $28 million to 27 colleges to support the study of capitalism from a moral perspective.

But on at least 17 of those campuses, including UNC-Charlotte, N.C. State and Johnson C. Smith University, the gifts come with an unusual stipulation: Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged" is included in a course as required reading.

The schools' agreements have drawn criticism from some faculty, who say it compromises academic integrity. In higher education, the power to decide course content is supposed to rest with professors, not donors. Debate about the gifts, which arose at UNCC this month, illustrates tensions that exist over corporate influence on college campuses.

UNCC received its $1 million gift pledge in 2005, but details about the "Atlas Shrugged" requirement came to light as the school dedicated an Ayn Rand reading room March 12.

"It's going to make us look like a rinky-dink university," UNCC religious studies professor Richard Cohen said Thursday after UNCC Chancellor Phil Dubois told the faculty council about the gift. "It's like teaching the Bible as a requirement."

Dubois, who learned of the book requirement this month, says it was ill-advised. He may ask Allison to reconsider it, he told faculty.

Allison has been surprised that the gifts can generate controversy. He says he simply wants students exposed to the late author's ideas, which he thinks the academic community has largely ignored. He welcomes opposing ideas.

He also points out that the schools approached the foundation, not the other way around.

"We obviously can't make anybody teach something," he says. "We wouldn't want to, we wouldn't try to. These are professors that want to teach this."

"Atlas Shrugged" tells of an America where the most gifted industrialists and creators go on strike. The book, more than 1,100 pages long, showcases Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, which says individuals have the right to live entirely for their own self-interest.

An atheist, Rand criticized government regulation of business.

Her followers "regard her as the greatest thinker to have graced this earth since Aristotle and the greatest writer of all time," Reason Magazine wrote in 2005. "Mainstream intellectuals tend to dismiss her as a writer of glorified pulp fiction and a pseudo-philosophical quack with an appeal for impressionable teens."

Allison discovered Rand as a business major at UNC-Chapel Hill in the late '60s. "Atlas Shrugged" remains his favorite book.

"Most of the defenders of free markets mostly do it from an economic perspective," Allison says. "They argue that free markets produce a higher standard of living, which is certainly very good. But Rand makes a connection to human nature and why individual rights and free markets are the only system consistent with human nature."

BB&T officials say they never made a specific decision to spread the gospel of ethical capitalism and Ayn Rand.

But in 1999, Duke University received money from BB&T to support the teaching of values and ethics in business. The gift didn't require that Duke teach Ayn Rand. Her work was already being taught there.

As word spread of that gift and others, more colleges approached the foundation with proposals. Allison shared his interest in Rand with them.

At least one school, UNC-Wilmington, offered to make "Atlas Shrugged" a requirement, figuring "our proposal might be more favorably received" if it were part of the package, officials said in an e-mail to the Observer.

Wilmington got a commitment of more than $1 million. But unlike at most campuses, the faculty voted to approve the proposal first.

Companies have long endowed college professorships and programs that fit their areas of interest. Sometimes, schools reject gifts if they can't live with a donor's conditions.

But as states reduce higher education budgets, business is playing a bigger role, experts say.

"They're so desperate for funding sources that they're willing to take more money with strings attached," says Jennifer Washburn, author of "University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education."