Institutions of higher learning are tax-exempt and supported because they are supposed to serve the public interest. However, a recent wave of books and scholarly articles shows how universities are being harnessed to serve the narrower interests of corporations.

Their conclusions are clear: Corporate research is aimed at maximizing profits, not necessarily in ensuring the public good. As economist Robert Reich, author of "Supercapitalism," has pointed out: "The basic reality is that corporations are not charitable or public institutions. They do not exist primarily to advance the public interest but their investors' interests."

This is why the planned renaming of the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Public Health as the Dennis and Joan Gillings School of Global Public Heath, in exchange for a gift of $50 million, raises concerns.

Dennis Gillings is CEO of Quintiles Transnational, which bills itself as "the world's leading pharmaceutical services company, with annual revenues of $2 billion." A School of Public Health news release announcing Gillings' gift noted it would help the school speed approval of new drugs. The first "laboratory of innovation" funded by Gillings conducts research on statistical methods for drug trials.

PUBLIC HEALTH IS CONCERNED WITH PROMOTING HEALTH AND PREVENTING DISEASE. This means clean air and water, nutritious food, safe working conditions, neighborhoods, housing and transportation. Environments that promote physical, social and mental well-being help people remain healthy and reduce the need for medical treatments.

Mass drug therapy as a public health strategy might be the preferred option for pharmaceutical companies. But it can divert efforts from creating working and living conditions that prevent disease. The size of the Gillings gift, which comes with a new School of Public Health policy board that includes both Gillingses, suggests a level of influence that could affect not only individual research projects, but also the character of the school's approach to public health.

The gift will also be used to increase the "financial literacy" of public health students. Financial literacy is important. However, the curriculum is a responsibility of the faculty. Shaping it to please wealthy donors raises questions about whether the university is up for sale. Both a 2006 UNC provost report and the American Association of University Professors are clear that faculty, not outside donors, have primary responsibility for the curriculum.

Other developments also suggest how the School of Public Health is responding to big money. Recently, faculty were asked to develop a proposal to study indoor air pollution in the United Arab Emirates. That proposal now exceeds $6 million. Although 80 percent of the UAE's population consists of disenfranchised guest workers, UNC would study only homes of mostly wealthier native Emerati. This appears inconsistent with one of the school's stated missions, to "eliminate health disparities across North Carolina and around the world."

The school is also developing new associations in closed, off-the-record meetings, with executives of corporations such as Nestle, McDonald's, PepsiCo and Kraft Foods. Why seek partnerships with companies that profit from mass marketing of high-calorie foods? The goal, according to one administrator, is to help stem the global obesity epidemic "while improving profitability." Again, the problem is that the best approach for public health may not be the best recipe for corporate profits.

The pro-industry direction of the School of Public Health is in step with policies of UNC-Chapel Hill and the UNC system. Administrators at Chapel Hill recently explained that the university is falling behind in the race to obtain corporate funding, and that we are in danger of losing the best faculty and students unless Carolina North is developed quickly as a satellite research park that can avoid on-campus restrictions on industry funding.

As Jennifer Washburn noted in her recent book "University, Inc.: Corporate Corruption of Higher Education," state governments increasingly view public universities more as engines of economic development tied to corporate interests than as independent institutions responsible to society as a whole.

CORPORATE DONATIONS ARE AN ACCEPTED PART of the non-state support that keeps universities in business. Industry funding can contribute importantly to public health research, and research faculty are in constant competition for funding. But the question remains: How much influence should industries that put profits before public health have on the university?

The School of Public Health's mission, like the UNC system's, is to serve the public. However, even as manipulation of science against the public interest receives more attention (think tobacco, global warming, drug risks, environmental health), our universities risk defining corporate interests as the public interest. If universities are skewed more toward the agenda of for-profit companies, they will be increasingly unable to promote public welfare when it conflicts with industry's bottom line.

Vigorous public discussion of these issues is critical for maintaining our universities as a public resource. It is indeed our responsibility to have that discussion.

Steve Wing is associate professor of epidemiology at the UNC School of Public Health and vice president of the N.C. State Conference of the American Association of University Professors. Cat Warren is associate professor in the Department of English at N.C. State University and president of the N.C.-AAUP.

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