Parceria universidade-indústria e mudanças na cultura acadêmica:Análise comparativa dos casos da Argentina e do Canadá

Daniel Schugurensky (University of Toronto)Judith Naidorf (Universidad de Buenos Aires)

Resumo:Este artigo explora mudanças na cultura acadêmica que tem ocorreram nas últimas décadas nas universidades públicas. A partir de uma perspectiva histórica e comparada (descrevendo os casos da Argentina e do Canadá) analisam-se as características das universidades e da cultura acadêmica no período do pós-guerra (1950-1970) e do final do século (1980-2000). No contexto das políticas neoliberais de comercialização do conhecimento, de diminuição do financiamento público e do redirecionamento dos fundos vinculados por agentes externos à universidade, durante o segundo período dá-se a instauração gradual do modelo de capitalismo acadêmico e a transição de uma universidade autônoma para uma universidade heterônoma

Palabras-chave: cultura acadêmica, relação universidade-indústria, autonomia, heteronomia.

University-industry partnerships and changes in academic culture:A comparative analysis of Argentina and Canada

Daniel Schugurensky and Judith Naidorf

Introduction

This chapter explores changes in academic culture in the last two decades in two countries, in an international context marked by economic globalization, neoliberal policies and the retrenchment of the welfare state. In many universities, these trends were associated with an increasing commodification of knowledge, a decline of block grants and a concominant ascendance of conditional funding and contracts, an intensification of academic capitalism, and a gradual shift from autonomy to heteronomy 1 (Schugurensky 1994; Slaughter & Leslie 1997; Newson & Buchbinder, 1988, 2000; Fisher & Rubenson 1998, Altbach 2002). We suggest that changes in particular academic cultures cannot be explained in isolation from these trends and from related developments like increasing pressures for self-recovery budgets, the multiplication of entrepreneurial activities, the inclusion of higher education as a service commodity in international agreements (e.g. WTO/GATS), and a general market-friendly climate.

For the purpose of this analysis, we conceptualize academic culture as the discourses, representations, motivations, ethical norms, conceptions, visions, and institutional practices of university actors. This includes academics’ ideas about the purpose of their own work and of the three main university functions that

relate to the production, transmission and application of academic knowledge (research, teaching and community service). The priorities given among and within these functions in a given institution are the product of internal and external factors, including funding arrangements, government policies and historical traditions.

To explore changes in academic culture, three main perspectives can be chosen. The first proposes a “determinist” causal explanation that understands changes in academic culture as a result of changes in the structures of rewards (e.g. are linking contracts with industry to promotions, salary increases, grants to conduct basic research, etc.) and punishments (e.g. reduced funding, infrequent promotions, layoffs, etc.). According to this explanation, as researchers learn to adapt to new rules, their academic culture changes and becomes ‘naturalized’.

The second advances a “voluntarist” explanation, according to which academics can often choose freely what to do, even in the context of external pressures. Thus, changes in academic culture are the result of voluntary and conscious choices made by individual faculty after they rationally evaluate the pros and cons of old and new rules, and the convenience or not to adapt to changes in the external world. According to this interpretation, universities are self-governed institutions, and academics have the power to define the rules of the game. Therefore, recent changes in academic culture can be explained as the conscious efforts of academics to adapt medieval institutions to the dynamics of global capitalism.

The third approach, recognizing the partial contributions of the previous perspectives, consists of a dialectic perspective rooted in conflict theory that identifies a permanent interplay between structure and agency. According to this explanation, which we find more persuasive, changes in academic culture arise in a context of constant disputes and negotiations between external pressures, on the one hand, and the ethical and intellectual choices of academic researchers, on the other. Following this approach, our analysis is framed by six related hypotheses:

1. While it is possible to talk about ‘academic culture’ in general terms, in any given institution a variety of academic cultures (in plural) may coexist. We are not talking only about the ‘two cultures’ discussed by C.P. Snow in 1959 (sciences and humanities), but also about different ways of understanding and undertaking academic work, such as the desirability or not of forging closer links with industry.

2. While in any given institutional setting a variety of academic cultures may coexist, in certain historical periods it is possible to identify a particular academic culture that is dominant or hegemonic, and others that are subordinate or marginal.

3. This relationship can change overtime: it is possible that the subordinate academic culture becoming dominant, and vice-versa. These changes can be long and imperceptible, or short-term and dramatic (e.g. due to a sudden change in the political or economic regime, and/or to the emergence of a new set of alliances, institutional practices and reward structures).

4. New generations of researchers who are only exposed to the hegemonic set of practices and values are more likely to accept them than older generations that were also exposed to the old practices and values. As the older generation of academics retire, the new values and practices become accepted as ‘normal’.

5. Academic cultures are neither fixed nor immutable, and their evolution is a product of resistance and accommodation to new rules, practices, ideas, and environments, in a process characterized by contradictory mechanisms of conflicts, negotiation, and consensus.

6. Whereas academic cultures are shaped by external factors like government policies, business practices or prevailing ideologies in society, at the same time, in a dialectical relationship, academic cultures can influence external policies, practices and ideologies.

Based on data collected from secondary and primary sources (including more than 70 semi-structured interviews with academics in Argentina and Canada), we submit that a shift in academic culture has been taking place in both countries since at least the early 1980s. During the post-war period (1950s to 1970s) the dominant academic culture in both countries was either indifferent or in opposition to establishing closer links with industry. However, in the last two decades of the 20th century, many academics began to accept those links as an unavoidable fact of life and often welcomed them. Three features are interesting to note in this shift. First, the significant nature of the change in relation to established traditions of the past. Second, the amazing speed in which the change occurred in relation to previous changes in academic culture. Third, the scarce debate on these issues that took place both on and off campus.

The rationale behind university-industry relationships

In recent decades universities have been urged by governments to build stronger links with industry and to seek alternative sources of funding. The idea of forging links between university and industry can be traced at least to Comte, who in 1819 published a plan for businessmen, industrialists and technologist-scientists to be represented by three chambers. Oftentimes (in capitalist and socialist countries alike) this model has taken the form of “cooperative” education programs in which students divided their time between classroom and factory, with a curriculum shaped to respond to the needs of the latter.

By the 1980s, this traditional model gave way to a new model (much deeper and global) characterized by the intensification of technology transfer from universities to industry and a commercialization of academic work. Since then, more researchers started transferring results to industrial companies, and new offices nurturing corporate-university links like technology transfer, contract management, patenting and licensing, international development and industrial liaisons were built on university campuses.

In many cases, private corporations provide universities with capital or operating grants in exchange for an influence over the direction of research and exclusive

licenses on patentable discoveries made in laboratories. The rationale behind these arrangements is that the knowledge system needed to support R&D depends on timely, frequent and informal interactions between practitioners and researchers. It is assumed that through these interactions, new ideas, relationships and approaches to business are more likely to emerge (Lindenstein & Walshok 1990). The intensification of university-industry relationships is particularly evident in the USA, where dozens of universities are turning to private corporations (especially pharmaceutical and electronics) to obtain revenues from scientific research (Tornatzky et al. 2002).

These increasing contracts with external customers -and the overall shift towards a more entrepreneurial university- cannot be isolated from the neoliberal belief about the superiority of market dynamics vis-à-vis academic autonomy, which is perceived as inherently irrelevant and self-centered. A related assumption is that the private sector is always more effective and efficient than the public sector, which is perceived as inherently wasteful, inefficient and corrupted. These beliefs have led to calls for more private universities and more entrepreneuralism in public universities. In terms of university-industry relations, a key assumption behind these calls is that by encouraging competition among suppliers, the market will reward the efficient and punish the inefficient. Hence, the argument goes, universities should be pressured to become more entrepreneurial and offer their services and products (research, consulting, training, etc.) to a wide range of customers (including the government) searching for the highest quality goods at the lowest price (Walford 1991). Now we will explore how this rationale is being played in our two case studies.

Argentina

Heir of the Napoleonic model and the progressive 1918 Cordoba Reform2, universities in Argentina experimented a “golden age” in the post-war period, with top-level research matching international standards, a high academic level, and a sustained democratic model of self-government that included professors, students and alumni. During the 1950s, this coincided with the modernization development that promoted an import substitution industrialization model. As part of this strategy, the state established the creation of large scientific-technological extra-university institutions which would undertake R&D activities in specific fields like agriculture, manufacturing, atomic energy, and basic research. At the same time, public universities continued being important research centres, and enrollments grew as the new middle class began to access higher education.

This process was dramatically interrupted in July 1966, when the military entered the University of Buenos Aires hitting and arresting students and faculty, including international visiting professors. This marked the beginning of a new period characterized by the intervention of public universities by military governments, which among other things imposed academic authorities and controlled curricula and research agendas. Military intervention also cancelled the University Act, reduced enrollments, and produced the virtual collapse of the scientific community. During this period research activities were undermined by reductions in funding, brutal repression of dissidence, the first massive exodus of Argentine professors and scientists, and the semi-paralysis of several research institutions

developed during the previous years like INTI, CNEA, INTA and CONICET (Grupo de Trabajadores de la Ciencia, 1972).

During the two decades that followed that military intervention in 1966, academic life in Argentina experimented two military dictatorships (1966–1973 and 1976–1983), with a short-lived democratic government in between them. During the first military regime (1966–1973), despite the intervention of the university and the repressive environment, a few circles of prestigious academics and intellectuals managed to remain active. Some of them, connected to a movement known as ‘Pensamiento Latinoamericano en Ciencia y Tecnología’, promoted animated debates and insightful analyses about the relationships among university research, development policies, state enterprises, and societal needs. They also stimulated innovative extension programs that assisted marginalized populations.

The 1976–1983 military regime, instead, was particularly damaging for the development of intellectual pursuits. Like in the previous dictatorship, scientific research and cultural production in public universities were suffocated by budget cutbacks and interventions, but this time around repression of dissidence and censorship went much further, making this the darkest and most violent period of Argentina’s recent past. In those years there was little room for academic debates, as many members of the university community were more concerned with surviving than with doing research or with articulating alternative visions. This dictatorship not only produced an agonizing academic culture but also designed and implemented a systemic machinery of state terrorism that tortured, murdered and disappeared 30,000 people, of which 21% were students. Universities became part of the "national security doctrine”, which imposed physical repression of dissidents, banning and destruction of textbooks, abolishment of university autonomy, screening of professors by intelligence services, censorship of theories like historical materialism and psychoanalysis, and a conservative attack on disciplines like sociology, psychology and anthropology. By 1983, electoral democracy was reestablished, and together with it came two decades of neoliberal medicine and structural adjustment that further shrunk higher education budgets, limiting the possibilities of undertaking high quality independent research in public institutions and encouraging academics to establish closer links with the market.

Relationships with industry

In 1983, the Alfonsín government created the Office of Technology Transfer, inaugurating a new cycle in Argentina’s university-industry relationships. This office, housed in the National Research Council, was conceived as a key initiative to attract private funding to the university budget, and to revitalize national industry after two decades of constant decay. This event marks a symbolic watershed in the university-industry relationships. In previous decades, and for several reasons, those relationships were more the exception than the norm.

First, they were perceived as detrimental for research. Research was conceived mostly as free from external pressures and restrictions, driven only by the desire to know, and ruled by regulations pertaining to how new knowledge was developed in

each discipline. The university’s research ethos was based on the principles of autonomy and science for knowledge’s sake.

Second, establishing partnerships with industry was seen as an alien, suspicious action, in danger of being judged by peers as an act of corruption. “At that time”, said one interviewee, “the utilitarian vision of university research was not seen in good light”. Nivoli (1992) confirms that before the 1980s technology transfer was considered a ‘bad word’ within scientific circles.

Third, many scientists, researchers, professors, administrators and students perceived the business sector (particularly foreign corporations) with distrust. In this context, the only acceptable kind of formal relationship with industry was with state enterprises. The rationale behind this emphasis was that the relation between public universities and public industries fulfilled the mission of public service. This orientation ended in the 1990s, when most state enterprises were privatized and sold at bargain prices to foreign corporations.

Fourth, the relationship between university and industry was not considered an important issue when thinking about scientific and technological policies. Beyond the calls for supporting state enterprises, there wasn’t a systemic theory, a global conceptual framework, or an ideological apparatus on this topic. As a result, this relationship was not valued by university actors, and was not transcended by a general scientific and technological policy.

Fifth, there was little pressure from external actors, as industry (and business in general) did not lobby universities to demand an institutional approach to promote systemic linkages. This indifference can be explained partly by the traditional low interest of industry for investing in R&D, and partly by the perception that partnering with a public university would undermine their interests. As an industrialist said to us, “Who was going to ensure us industrialists that the research findings are going to be kept in secrecy until we make a return of the investment? If the findings are published, then the competition will have open access to them.”

Sixth, as a result of the absence a conceptual framework to guide this relationship, and the low pressure from industry, the scarce existing relationships lacked a nurturing and supportive institutional framework. The scarce contracts with the productive sector held in some academic units were usually through informal channels. As a senior researcher noted, "before an explicit policy of university-industry relationships was developed in this university, you could probably find some ‘nice’ examples of successful relationships, but in most cases they were the result of ad hoc initiatives of researchers, or of chance, but not of an explicit policy".

Finally, those researchers who were already linked to industry were reluctant to institutionalize those relationships. These research teams were able to manage research projects with external funding, but often outside any official budget. They preferred to keep them outside of the radar of the university community. From the researchers’ perspective, they were helping the university by hiring graduate students as research assistants, purchasing lab equipment and drugs for

experiments and even basic maintenance like fixing windows. From the perspective of university authorities, however, these projects were semi-clandestine private operations whose budgets were a ‘black box’ unknown to anybody but the researchers. University administrators also perceived that these research teams were doing something profoundly unethical by using public facilities and infrastructure for private benefits. As a top bureaucrat of the largest university in Argentina told us, “those researchers didn’t want to let the resources obtained through this sort of agreements be seen because in that time of scarcity nobody revealed their sources or funding". Another administrator added:

“There were no institutional channels, but it didn’t mean that the transference did not exist. It existed, but through private agreements. Also, many times we thought that researchers sold their work for an abject price in order to collect a few bucks. They did it in the wrong way. The idea behind institutionalizing it and having some control over the university’s flow of resources was also to give it more value and recognition".

During the first democratic government (1983–1988), the National Council for Scientific and Technological Research started to organize into a coherent framework the experience of technology transfer that had been accumulated during the military period. By 1987, the University of Buenos Aires created the Dirección de Convenios y Transferencias (Office of agreement and Transfer), further institutionalizing the relationship with industry.

In 1990, with a new government in place, this process of institutionalization took new impetus. First, the resolution 787/90 provided the first regulatory framework for enhancing the linkages between the University of Buenos Aires and the industry3. It established that the benefits resulting from the commercialization of research results should be distributed in a specific way. Forty percent would go to the department of the research group, 20 percent to a special R&D fund, and 40 percent would be shared among full-time professors (approximately 10% of all professors) as salary complements (Naidorf 2002).

Secondly, the Law 23.877 of 1990 established the possibility of creating Units of Technological Liaisons (Unidades de Vinculación Tecnológica). This piece of legislation opened for the first time the possibility of approving additional monetary compensations to a scientist involved in a research project funded by industry. This was linked to a tax exemption model for the companies working with the Liaison Units.

Thirdly, in 1990 the first Unidad de Vinculacion Tecnologica (Unit of Technological Liaison) of the largest university (Universidad de Buenos Aires, or UBA) was created under the name of UBATEC S.A. This was conceived as an enterprise formed by the University of Buenos Aires, the Argentinean Association of Industry and the Municipality of Buenos Aires with the purpose of marketing university research production. By 2003, there were almost 100 enterprises like UBATEC throughout the country 4.

Fourthly, one of the most important scientific policies of the early 1990s was the constitution of Fontar5 and Foncyt6. These two institutions became the new managers (replacing CONICET) of large amounts of public funding aimed specifically at technological liaisons with industry. Fontar tends to fund projects whose purposes concern innovation and technological modernization within private sector enterprises. Argentine companies can apply for fiscal credit certificates for basic and applied research, pre-competitive research, technological adaptation and improvements. Foncyt tends to sponsor S&T research groups working in public and private nonprofit organizations whose propose is the generation of new knowledge. Funds are granted for basic or applied research projects that are likely to result in journal publications, or for joint corporate/institutional development of potentially applicable technologies.

During Menem’s two presidential mandates during the nineties, this legal framework was coupled with regular budget cuts to universities and to social services and the privatization of many state-owned enterprises and public agencies. The government even drafted a proposal to privatize the national research system. The rationale behind this failed initiative was that by leaving the research system in the private sector, university research could become more relevant to the local industry, under the assumption that local industry was interested in funding research efforts.7

Together, the neoliberal ideology of the government, the budgetary crisis of the university, and the regulatory framework set in motion, put pressure on academics to reorient their research goals towards the market, or at least to think about strategies to make their research more marketable. True, in some university units resistance against private funding was (and still is) alive and strong (e.g. the preservation of tuition free university), and a few reservations on sponsored research arose regarding issues like conflict of interests or the secrecy of research findings. However, in general terms, it is clear that Argentina’s academic culture has been experiencing important changes. The new market orientation has affected the academic culture in most disciplines, and is particularly noticeable in areas like engineering, pharmacy, and natural sciences (e.g. physics, chemistry, and biology).

In high intensive research departments, the calls for social transformation and independent research typical of the 1960s and 1970s have been replaced for a more pragmatic approach that pays more attention to sponsored research with marketable applications. Moreover, in contrast to the anti-imperialist sentiments of the 1960s and 1970s, today many academics aim at signing contracts with multinational companies because of their larger capacity to finance research activities relative to national industry. Interestingly enough, the debates on the potential perils of a heteronomous university so far have put more attention on state interventionism than on commercialization of academic activities. Given the long and tense relationship between universities and the state in Argentina, and the short history of university-business relationships, this is not entirely surprising. However, a growing concern is already observable among university leaders. For instance, the President of the largest and most influential higher education institution, the University of Buenos Aires, warned that, in their frantic search for

private resources, universities may end up becoming the handmaiden of industry, selling their soul to the market and losing their raison d’etre:

“The enormous budget restrictions force universities to look desperately for resources. In this search it is losing most of its essence. Universities should not be seen as businesses but as cultural centres. This free intellectual city -as the university always has been understood- is being dismembered by market forces and in this process the university is considered only as a provider of services. I think that a university is something else”. (Etcheverry, 2003). 8

However, many of those academics actively engaged in university-industry research are not overly concerned with this prospect. In public, they tend to argue that it is possible to undertake contracts with business while maintaining academic freedom, and that it is possible to maintain a balance between marketable research and curiosity-driven research. In private, however, many recognize that in today’s context they tend to dedicate more time and energy to research that is sponsored or that has marketable potential.

Canada

During the 1960s and 1970s, guided by the prevailing doctrines of human capital theory and meritocracy, Canadian universities integrated in their mandates the twin objectives of serving the needs of the economy and democratizing society. In that context, the enrollment expansion of the 1960s was justified in terms of economic development and societal democratization (Newson & Buchbinder 1988). On one hand, massive investments of public funds were premised on the need for a highly skilled and well-educated workforce to contribute to the economic health of the country. On the other, it was emphasized that universities should play a democratizing role by providing opportunities for social, political, and economic mobility, by promoting rigorous public debates, and by setting an example of democratic self-governance (some commentators of that period referred to the university as a democratic social movement 9).

In those years, the principles of institutional autonomy and academic freedom were clearly enshrined in the values and practices of university actors, many of whom insisted that the university should be at arm's length from the military-industrial complex, and that it should avoid being tied to the market. By the beginning of the 1980s, however, the double hegemony of the economic development project and the democratizing project began to fade, challenged by a new political, economic and cultural environment. A new university model based on government controls and commercialization emerged, often justified by a discourse that appealed to the widely accepted principles of ‘accountability’ and ‘relevance’.

Since then, Canadian universities were encouraged to forge more intense relationships with the market. In case academics were not motivated to take this route on their own, governments put some pressure by imposing significant budgetary cuts, which placed several universities in positions of financial exigency.

In 1991 the Federal government decided to freeze the per capita EFP transfers to post-secondary institutions for five years, which led to a 7.7% drop in cash transfers that same year (CAUT 1992). In some provinces like Ontario, no other transfer sector suffered so much during the nineties as university funding. As operating budgets went down, tuition and fees went up, and in only a decade average class sizes and student faculty rations nearly doubled, forcing universities to make up for cuts by seeking private, strings-attached dollars (Jacek, 2003; Wiseman, 2003).

Relationship with industry In Canada, a symbolic moment for the articulation of a new university-industry relation was the 1983 Corporate-Higher Education Forum. Modeled after a similar one held in the USA in 1978, this Forum contributed to provide a favorable environment for stronger links between university researchers and corporations, and to harmonize university activities with the market. The alliance that developed between selected business and university leaders was so intense that the chairman of the Forum observed that, during the discussions, it was almost impossible to distinguish who was a university president and who was a corporate president (Newson & Buchbinder, 1988). Among the recommendations emerging from the Forum were policies promoting funding cutbacks, institutional competition, performance indicators, and closer cooperation with business.

This recommendation was followed up with an explicit promotion of a "service university" model, piloted at the University of Waterloo. In this model, analyzed by Newson and Buchbinder (1988), private corporations provide universities with capital or operating grants in exchange for influence over the direction of research and exclusive licenses on patentable discoveries made in laboratories. As part of the same process, not only the budget allocated to the several centers of excellence in research was severely curtailed, but these centers were pressured to move from basic to applied research. Likewise, new programs are required not only to address specific "societal needs" but to offer at least the promise of entrepreneurial opportunities before they will be authorized for government funding support (Calvert & Kuehn, 1993, Turk 2000).10

Universities have not been always passive in relation to external pressures. Sometimes they have been active agents in a process of self-transformation in which budget-based rationalization and corporate linking became their means of institutional survival. As a consequence, universities are now beginning to function less as institutions whose essence derives from their educational and scholarly commitments and more as businesses that deliver educational services and produce knowledge-based products (Newson 1998, Polster 1994, Fisher & Rubenson 1998). Janice Newson (1998) describes some elements of the new academic culture as follows:

Today, along with many of these same colleagues, I find myself in departmental and faculty meetings engaged in debates over how we can re-shape our academic curricula to better accommodate the demands of “the external market.'' We attempt to justify our pedagogical strategies in terms of measures of efficiency and cost-effectiveness. We re-formulate our

research interests to fit into the most recently announced policy objectives of various government ministries which are closely paired with (if not embedded in) SSHRC, NSERC, or MRC funding program guidelines. We try to define the “products'' of our intellectual activities, whether teaching or research, in ways that will attract and serve the needs of potential corporate clients or that will fit into a prescribed market “niche.''

For her, this context produced an environment in which collegial decision-making is challenged by a top-bottom agenda controlled by central administration, and in which students are treated more as consumer of products -or even as products themselves- than as active participants in academia. These changes are not limited 1 Autonomy is the quality or state of being independent, free, and self-directed. Heteronomy refers to the subjection to external controls and impositions, that is, a subordination to the law or domination of another. The heteronomous university results from the combination of two apparently contradictory dimensions: ‘laissez faire’ and ‘interventionism’. In the heteronomous model, the university agenda is increasingly conditioned by market demands and state imperatives, and it encompasses both a 'commercial' (or market, entrepreneurial, service or business) university, and a 'controlled' (or 'responsive' or 'accountable') university (see Schugurensky 1994, 1999).2 The features of the 1918 Reform can be summarized as follows:

a) institutionalization of student participation in university councils, in a three-party system including professors and alumni (co-governance).

b) a linkage between student politics and national politics, to mobilize the university toward the solution of economic, social and political problems

c) a concern for university extension, particularly to courses for workers leading to the development of fraternal bonds with the proletariat

d) tuition-free education, conceived as an instrument to achieve democratization of access, expanding enrollments to include all academically qualified applicants and replacing the elitist , oligarchic and archaic 19th century university by a mass university

e) a defense of institutional autonomy with respect to the statef) institutionalization of mechanism to protect academic freedom, including the implementation of “free

teaching” to ensure academic pluralism and to break the monopoly of teaching enjoyed by senior professors (catedraticos)

g) promotion of new ideas, innovative methods of teaching, changes in a exam system, optional classroom attendance, original research, and a rejection of dogmatism, all leading to the replacement of theology by positivist disciplines

h) selection of faculty through open, competitive examinations in order to counteract nepotism and patronage, and promotion of professors on the basis of merit and achievement rather than seniority

i) the enlargement and diversification of professional training through the establishment of new professional schools

j) an understanding of university life as a truly communitarian experience, therefore encouraging the development of a population of full-time professors and full-time students

3 The antecedent for this regulation can be found in 1964, when the first Special Found for the Scientific and Technological Activities was proposed to ensure the exclusion of foreign investment in university research activities 4 For a complete list visit www.perseo.agencia.secyt.gov.ar/ftr/list_uvt.htm5 Fondo Tecnologico Argentino, or Argentine technological Fund. See www.agencia.secyt.gov.ar/ftr/fontar.htm6 Fondo para la investigacion cientifica y tecnologica, or Found for Scientific and Technological Research. See www.agencia.secyt.gov.ar/fct/foncyt.htm7 However, available evidence from Argentina suggests that this interest has been historically low, and focussed almost exclusively in applied research with short-term rates of return. See Pichel 1991, Tenti 1993).8 In the Spanish original: "La enorme restriccion presupuestaria ha obligado a las universidades busquen desesperadamente recursos, y en esa busqueda estan perdiendo mucho de lo que es su esencia. No hay que ver las universidades como empresas sino como ambitos culturales. Esa ciudad intelectual libre, como siempre fue concebida la universidad, está siendo brutalmente despedazada por las fuerzas del mercado, que hace que la universidad se convierta en proveedora de servicios educativos. Yo creo que la universidad es otra cosa". Interview with Jaim Etcheverry, published in Clarin, April 7, 2003.9? See, for instance, Zaslove 1996.

to internal institutional arrangements; they also affect relationships between academics and external bodies like granting agencies, private corporations, and national and international research consortia. These relationships are being reconstructed through a variety of policies, funding arrangements, practices and discourses that have direct implications on the university agenda and its role in society (Polster 1994, Newson, 1998)11. An example of the nature of changes that took place in research institutions during the last decades can be found in the National Research Council of Canada (NRC). At a focus group we conducted with senior administrators, one of them recalled that in the 1970s the NRC was run very much like a university:

“Everybody was doing long-term research, nobody was interacting with industry and it was a lovely and wonderful university environment to be in. And they said: this is not going to work because they have got to get them facing the real world and understanding the real challenges, interacting with industry and listening to industry.”

Then, the rules of the game changed, and so did the rewards and punishments structure. The traditional model of promotions (based solely on the basis of publications) was replaced by a mixed package of publications, technology transfer, and interactions with industry. Senior researchers had a particularly hard time adapting to the new institutional arrangements, and many of them (about 80%) opted out. One participant described that moment:

“So now what we had is these old scientists who the only thing they’ve ever done is papers, and a lot of them left. They said: “I’m not doing that, this is ruining my career, I want to do my own research, leave me alone in my lab. I don’t want to interact with the industry. I just very much want to continue to do what I’m doing.”

The remaining portion of senior researchers had to learn new rules and roles in order to adapt to the emerging system:

About 20% of them stayed, and managed to make that change, so each year more and more was required of them. They still had to produce papers but they had to interact with industry. So they had to sit on boards, they had to sit down and talk to them, they had to go out and make presentations. It is not an obligation, but if they wanted to be promoted, it is an incentive. So if you’re going to take the technology you’ve produced and transfer it to industry, you have to learn a lot of these new skills, so we [NRC] had courses. Then once you’ve transferred it to industry, then you have royalties, and the royalties come back: 50% goes to the NRC, 35% goes to the scientist personally, and 15% goes back to the program.

10 Interestingly, a former President of the University of Waterloo, recently published an essay in the University Affairs in which he lamented that “we have become a little too economy-centric in our focus, at the expense of some other values and considerations that go to the heart of our enterprise” (Downey 2003:29). 11 Janice Newson, York University “The Corporate-Linked University: From Social Project to Market Force” Canadian Journal of Communication . Volume 23, Number 1, 1998

The process of cultural change took approximately 10 to 15 years to occur, as the old generation retired and the new generation accepted as natural the only rules of the game they ever knew. This produced a research landscape dominated by an entrepreneurial academic culture that is characterized by a more fluid transit between universities and business:

These days, scientists seeking to join the NRC know that this is the situation and they are the young entrepreneurs. Now they have another situation there: they’ve now got people who are doing this and are saying “wait a minute, I’m just getting 35% of this… I could be getting 100%… so what I want to be able to do is take my technology and leave with it, and go and start my own company”. So the NRC said “fine, no problem”. So the options are that the scientists can stay and do their work at 35%, or they can take their technology and leave and start their own companies and make way more, but then they are also forced to assume all the risks.

Provincial governments played an important role in fostering universities-industry links. In Ontario, for instance, major impetus for strengthening these relationships came in 1990 (curiously, the same year in which a battery of similar laws and policies were advanced in Argentina), when the deputy Minister of Education noted that the demand for post-secondary education was growing exponentially.12

Faced with increasing participation in higher education, Canadian policy-makers considered that the government’s share of the cost could not increase accordingly for practical and ethical reasons. Practically, it was not a viable arrangement, as taxpayers would feel too burdened, and raising taxes would equate to political suicide. Ethically, it was argued that asking taxpayers to fund university expansion amounted to the poor subsidizing the elite. Tuition and fees could be raised only to a certain limit, so their added contribution to the overall budget would be negligible. Hence, it became inevitable that universities and colleges had to seek complementary funding from the private sector.

Then, Ontario established the Partnership Development Branch, a unit within the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities that lasted two and a half years before being dissolved and absorbed into another department. This partnership included not only research but also teaching. For instance, corporations could give post-secondary institutions new technology to be used for college students but also for the training of their own employees. Given the faster pace of technological change, this model was perceived as a win-win situation. Private companies could have a place where their employees learn from college professors with state of the art technology, and when they would not use it, college students could. Then, the best graduates could find a place in the company. This departed from the traditional model of companies donating equipment to educational institutions. As one interviewee noted:

12 In 1960, only 10% of secondary school graduates went on to university, and in the 1990s the proportion rose to about 40%. Also, during the 1990s more than 20% of Canadian workers had university credentials, and about 23% had a college degree. This meant that by the end of the 20th century close to 50% of the Canadian workforce had post-secondary experience, something unprecedented in Canada and in many countries.

“It is not that the university or college is receiving a gift from the corporation; they are working together to ensure the best skilled workforce for both the company and the students in training”.

Another way in which this model departed from the previous model was the blending of college professors and corporate trainers:

“In Canada you would see academic professors working side by side with the corporations and industry. Sometimes you can’t distinguish who is the academic and who is from the corporation.”

These and other partnerships were later encouraged not only by the Ministry of Education, but also by other agencies like the Ministry of Energy, Science and Technology, The Centers of Excellence, or the Ministry of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovations (formerly Ministry of Economic Development and Trade). These relationships are continually evolving and have differential impacts in different areas of the university. Academics in social sciences and humanities experience little of these developments, but in fields like engineering, biology and medicine the impact is more evident. As one interviewee noted,

“…this has caused some tensions within the institution because some professors see it as an intrusion, and others see it as ‘this is the way we do business’.”

In light of this observation, it would be interesting to revitalize the debate on the two cultures -stimulated by C.P. Snow in 1959- to better understand these differences in the present context, both in terms of teaching and research.

In closing, the modus operandi of Canadian universities is changing, and with it the culture of their communities. As Fisher and Rubenson (1998) note, Canadian universities are becoming more commercial and more entrepreneurial, and their traditional “civilizing mission” is losing ground. They claim that as universities establish closer and more accountable relationships with industry, and try more purposely to adapt to business needs, they are losing autonomy. This supports our hypothesis that these developments are speeding the transition towards a heteronomous institutional model.

Summary and conclusions

From the 1950s to the 1970s, the academic culture in both countries emphasized that universities should have a high degree of institutional autonomy and should play a democratizing role. Such role was not only about promoting opportunities for social, political, and economic mobility, but also about providing an example of a public institution whose structures and practices conformed to democratic principles of governance. During that period, the higher education system of both countries was composed predominantly by public institutions (with a negligible presence of private institutions) with low or non-existent tuition fees. Those were also the years of enrollment expansion, which was favored by the consolidation of the Welfare State and by the popularity of human capital theory, which

recommended larger investments in education and science. Expansion was also possible by the sustained growth enjoyed by both economies (agriculture, mining, etc.) and a significant redistribution of profits through public investments.

During the post-war period, in the mainstream academic culture of both countries higher education was considered a common good aimed at enhancing the common good. This perception, which permeated the ethos guiding research, teaching and extension activities. was based on traditional university models that in part could be traced to medieval times (like the idea of the uncontaminated academic haven), but also to more recent (modernist) contributions such as the enlightenment, positivism, liberalism and Marxism. The relationship with industry, at that time restricted to a small group of researchers, was for many academics in both countries either an alien concept or a problematic issue.

By the late seventies, the social contract of the Welfare State began to enter in crisis, and the neoliberal policies implemented by Reagan in the USA and Thatcher in England marked the beginning of a new global era. The new dominant ideology was explicitly market-friendly, and conceived the state as an obstacle for an efficient economy. During those years, the traditional academic culture began to be replaced by a new paradigm that first accepted and later endorsed the role of private industry in university endeavors. This was more noticeable in the sciences than in the humanities, but the ideological shift occurred in both academic tribes.

We identify a turning point in this shift in the early eighties, when a simultaneous impetus for the institutionalization of the university-industry liaison took place in both countries. In 1983, an Office of Technology Transfer was created at the National Research Council (Conicet) in Argentina, and a Corporate-Higher Education forum took place in Canada. While the university-industry relationship has existed to a certain extent throughout the past century, from then onwards the trend has been much deeper and global. In the last two decades, technology transfer from universities to industry has proliferated around the world, leading to a larger commercialization of academic work. In developed and developing nations alike, more researchers are transferring results to industrial companies and new offices of technology transfer are being built on university campuses. Many university researchers, previously situated between capital and labor, become positioned squarely in the marketplace (Axelrod 1982, 1986, 2002, Slaughter & Leslie 1997). Moreover, in some countries, political and business leaders conceive universities mainly as arms of the state and as R&D facilities for industrial advancement.

In Argentina and Canada, academic culture was not immune to these processes and to the new ideological climate nurtured by them. After the foundational process, which we locate symbolically in 1983, a short period of resistance from some groups took place, but by and large, most members of the academic community did not pay much attention to this process. Among the minority who felt somewhat concerned about the potential implications of the new direction, only a small only a small group of academics in both countries (particularly in Canada) warned about the potential risks of adopting a closer relationship with business, but those words had little impact.

Generally speaking, among those who were concerned there was not a firm belief that a closer university-industry was a real threat for academic work. Many of them thought that this was a temporary situation that would fade away when budget cutbacks were eliminated or reduced. Others thought that significant changes would never be imposed on academics without their consent, that university-market relations would always be in the margins and not at the core of academic operations, and that the academic ethos would not tolerate an institutionalization of an intense marriage with business. By the late 1990s, however, changes in academic culture were already clear and noticeable. Whereas during the previous decades the vast majority believed that stronger relationships with industry were improbable, temporary or undesirable, more researchers started to change their minds and began to accept the new role of the university as inevitable, permanent, and even desirable.

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