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Confessions of a stair mistress
By Elizabeth B. Krieger
While other students scarf chips, sling back beers and study, a growing tribe of compulsive exercisers pursues the perfect workout
(01/04/98)

Crisis in English
By Christopher Shea
When the Modern Language Association convenes this year, highbrow literary questions will take a back seat to a thorny debate about the ongoing dearth of jobs
(12/24/98)

Zen and the art of employee maintenance
By Chris Colin
What is the sound of one hand filing? Or, can the Buddha help the temp workers of the world?
(12/23/98)

The Marxist Wall Street couldn't ignore
By Annalee Newitz
How did an English doctoral dropout like Doug Henwood become the first anti-capitalist pundit for the CNN crowd?
(12/21/98)

Slaves to the game
By Isaac Zaur
Once the violent world of video games seeped into our friendships, there was no going back
(12/18/98)

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Editor's note: This story is the first in a series that will explore the growing relationship between universities and corporations.

Nancy Shore could not believe what she saw. In the Quad Dining Hall at Grinnell College stood a man in a Cap'n Crunch outfit, flanked by a PR flack. The duo implored students to lobby the campus dining service to add the sucrose-laden children's favorite to the college's breakfast offerings.

Shore, a sophomore, doesn't have a political beef with the good Cap'n (even at the Iowa school chock-full of granola-crunching lefties), but she has a philosophical problem with what she sees as the corporate invasion of traditionally sacred spaces. Shore has started her own zine, "FREK," to address exploitative commercialism and her next target is the new corporate playground, the college campus.

"I came to Grinnell because I liked the small community. I wanted to get away from the city while I was being intellectually formed," says Shore. "Now I am being told that the goal is to make money and buy things, not to learn. It's easier here to find an application for a credit card than it is to find a recycling bin."

Shore is not alone in her dismay at encroaching commercialism on campus. Over the past decade, the strip-malling of student unions, bookstores, athletic events and even classrooms has gradually begun to stir controversy among students and faculty. Appearances of Cap'n Crunch pushers notwithstanding, most of the corporatism operating on college campuses is of a far deeper and less visible kind. Academic departments -- predominantly in engineering and the sciences -- have begun to negotiate with specific companies to fund student research for access to patenting rights. Last fall this trend reached a new low when Swiss biotechnology firm Novartis struck a groundbreaking deal with UC-Berkeley's College of Natural Resources. College deans and presidents have zealously pursued corporate partnerships -- from endowed chairs to underwritten research programs to building sponsorships -- often inventing new ways for corporations to sow and reap the benefits of higher education.

To be fair to the administrators, the courtship with corporate America hasn't been a capricious dalliance so much as a marriage born of convenience and sometimes hardship. According to "The Condition of Education 1998," a report from the National Center for Education Statistics, federal and state outlays for higher education have dropped precipitously, while tuition has skyrocketed. For example, in 1977, state spending made up 52.4 percent of public university revenues; by 1995, that percentage dipped to 40.6. Concurrently, in 1977, tuition and fees made up 16.4 percent of public university funding; in 1995 tuition and fees accounted for 24 percent of public university funding.

With dwindling public outlays for higher education and the ever savvy student/consumer demanding more non-academic services, colleges and universities have often entered into business deals with the private sector to ensure they remain competitive with other institutions. If universities turn a cold shoulder to fiscal suitors, the quality and quantity of higher education could suffer drastically.

N E X T_ P A G E .|. Distinguished Taco Bell chairs and other campus-company innovations