Ivy and Industry: Business and the Making of the American University, 1880-1980 (review)

Twenty-first-century research universities are widely viewed as engines of economic growth for their communities, regions, and nations. Virtually all top research universities and most aspiring institutions have technology-transfer and licensing offices whose function is to exploit the results of their faculty's research in the commercial arena. Many have research parks intended to cultivate start-up companies and/or attract existing businesses. A growing number of universities employ lobbyists to persuade congressional representatives to appropriate funds directly to them, usually with the expectation that such "pork barrel" appropriations will bring economic benefits to their states or districts.

Much has been written on the commercialization of academic research, especially since the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980. This law, which allowed universities to take ownership of patents arising from federally sponsored research, is widely regarded as a watershed in university-industry relations. Christopher Newfield's Ivy and Industry, which looks at the development of those relations in the century before Bayh-Dole, puts their recent evolution in a useful long-term perspective. An English professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Newfield seems an unlikely writer to address this subject; his previous works include books titled The Emerson Effect: Individualism and Submission in America (1996) and Mapping Multiculturalism (1996). His analysis here is enriched, however, by his personal experience at Reed College, Cornell, and Rice, as well as Santa Barbara.

Newfield sees research universities as having been a central component of the U.S. industrial system since the post–Civil War era. They supplied knowledge and managers for the emerging industrial economy. At the same time, they provided a home for "non-utilitarian knowledge" and curiosity-driven research. And they gave the professional middle class a humanistic perspective on themselves and society. A key aspect of Newfield's book, one that differentiates it from others on this subject, is its focus on what he calls "this double-edged industrial role."

The author examines the ways in which corporate styles of management and business considerations have permeated the university. He examines the internal workings of the university, which he sees as subject to a dual management system—a corporate-style business side that runs the institution and sets policy, and an academic side controlled by the faculty. While some observers term this "shared governance," Newfield prefers to call it "divided governance," emphasizing the limits on the ability of the faculty to wield decision-making authority. In his view, the system serves the science faculty (in which individual academic entrepreneurs thrive) better than the humanities faculty, which he sees as beset by bureaucracy, vulnerable to business influences, and limited in its freedom of action. Nonetheless, he views the university as permanently dependent on humanism and he traces the response of humanists to the growing domination of the university by business.

Newfield carries his analysis into the present, examining the impact of increased government interest in and support for stronger ties between universities and industry. This interest is a result of pressures from policymakers for practical results (i.e., economic benefits, jobs, international competitiveness) from the billions of federal dollars that are spent each year on academic research. He sees difficult challenges in these demands: the need for university research to maintain its independence in the face of commercial pressures; the need to reconcile the university's two missions of economic and personal development; and the need for universities to change as faculties and student bodies become increasingly diverse.

This is not a book for policy wonks. It prescribes no courses of action, no approaches to solving the problems it identifies. But it is a provocative work. It offers humanists a way to think about the dilemmas their disciplines face in an increasingly technological environment. And it offers scientists, technologists, and historians of science and technology an opportunity to see their domains from a perspective...