reviews.p65


Book
Reviews



Bok, Derek. Universities in the Marketplace: 
The Commercialization of Higher Educa­
tion. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. 
Pr., 2003. 233p. alk. paper, $22.95 (ISBN 
0691114129). LC 2002­29267. 

A stale joke in academe asks, “Do you 
know why academic infighting is so vi­
cious?” The traditional response is “be­
cause the stakes are so small.” But it may 
be time to retire this hackneyed sarcasm. 
No longer can anyone claim the stakes are 
so small. For example, by 1996 Stanford 
and the University of California had 
earned more than $150 million in royal­
ties on a patent for gene splicing. Colum­
bia University, exploiting its 1983 patent 
for a method of making protein­generat­
ing cells, earned about $100 million per 
year during the patent’s last days of va­
lidity. That patent expired in 2000, and the 
university attempted to persuade Con­
gress to extend it. When that effort failed, 
Columbia filed new patent claims that 
would have guaranteed it seventeen more 
years of a multimillion­dollar income.1 

Many universities have gained great 
wealth by allying themselves with the 
commercial sector, licensing their patents 
or otherwise associating themselves with 
large­scale industries.2 Although modern 
American universities may not all be ex­
actly rolling in money, many have found 
ways to tap wealth undreamed of only a 
generation ago. In fact, declares Derek 
Bok, by the year 2000, American univer­
sities’ annual income from royalties ex­
ceeded a billion dollars! 

The purpose of Bok’s Universities in the 
Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher 
Education is to investigate the history of aca­
demic connections to commerce, assess the 
consequences of such alliances, and exam­
ine their potential impact. Bok’s twenty­
year tenure as president of Harvard puts 
him in a unique position to analyze and 
judge the consequences of the academic– 
commercial connection. He analyzes three 

distinct areas of the modern 
university’s involvement with 
commerce: athletics, scientific re­
search, and higher education it­
self. Bok begins his analysis of 
each area with a careful summary 
of how business connections have 
truly benefited higher education. It would 
be entirely wrong to suggest that, in so do­
ing, Bok is merely playing a game: acknowl­
edging the true benefits of university–busi­
ness liaisons only to immediately devalue 
them by illustrating instances of egregious 
malfeasance. It quickly becomes evident 
that he is not setting up straw men. Bok 
outlines in considerable detail exactly how 
connections to commerce have materially 
and incontrovertibly assisted higher edu­
cation. But those advantages have not come 
without substantial costs. After acknowl­
edging the benefits, Bok immediately sum­
marizes the risks, damages, disadvantages, 
and even sometimes the falsehoods of the 
claimed assistance. The result is a devastat­
ing critique of how the advantages of com­
mercial alliances have often not only failed 
the ultimate purposes of higher education 
in the United States, but also damaged its 
potential. 

Athletics is the first area subject to Bok’s 
critique. Candidly and mercilessly, he 
summarizes the ugly history of intercolle­
giate football—its failed promise to “build 
character,” its unsupportable claim to have 
helped minorities achieve a high­quality 
education, and its grievous undermining 
of academic standards. Students whose 
academic achievement and potential 
would hardly qualify them for careers in 
any learned profession are not only rou­
tinely admitted to universities of every 
quality but are even turned into national 
celebrities. Looking at the revenue­gener­
ating sports, mainly football and basket­
ball, Bok informs the reader that as of 2001, 
some thirty coaches were earning in ex­
cess of a million dollars annually, far more 

78 



Book Reviews 79 

than most college and university presi­
dents. Bok strongly focuses on the almost 
complete disconnect between athletic 
prowess and academic achievement. He 
builds a powerful indictment: 

What can intercollegiate sports 
teach us about the hazards of com­
mercialization? First of all, the saga 
of big-time athletics reveals that 
American universities, despite their 
lofty ideals, are not above sacrific­
ing academic values—even values 
as basic as admission standards and 
the integrity of their courses—in 
order to make money. 

Indeed, Bok reaches the conclusion, de­
scribed by him as “melancholy,” that 
through their athletic programs, “univer­
sities have compromised the most funda­
mental purpose of academic institutions.” 

Turning to his second area, scientific 
research, Bok maintains that the record 
has been no less dismal and the battles 
between the worlds of intellect and indus­
try no less ruthless: Scientists have been 
prohibited from publishing (or even dis­
cussing at conferences) results unfavor­
able to their commercial sponsors’ mar­
keting goals. Companies have punished 
universities by threatening to withhold 
promised financial support should scien­
tists dare to publish data unfavorable to 
sponsors’ interests. Researchers have 
been threatened with lawsuits, even 
grievously defamed. Companies have 
imposed a militarylike secrecy upon fac­
ulty who work with them, severely ed­
ited scholars’ reports, and even had their 
own staffs write slanted drafts to which 
university researchers were expected to 
attach their names. By Bok’s account, 
some elements of the commercial sector 
merely look upon faculty and graduate 
students as company agents—virtual 
employees, hired guns—charged to pro­
duce a stream of research from which will 
follow a stream of revenue for their busi­
nesses. Bok’s charges are not vague hints; 
he cites prestigious institutions, names 
researchers whose careers were jeopar­

dized or damaged by threats and personal 
attacks, and provides many poignant de­
tails. 

In the third area, higher education it­
self, Bok outlines the temptations of easy 
money, ostensibly available via universi­
ties’ willingness, indeed eagerness, to use 
the income from distance education (both 
domestically and abroad) to finance pro­
grams only indirectly linked to higher 
education. Bok further suggests that some 
schools willingly exploit the Internet 
more for the money than for any possible 
social benefit. 

“Is everything in a university for sale 
if the price is right?” asks the book jacket. 
Are universities now ready to accept ad­
vertising within physical facilities and 
curricula? Will they permit commercial 
enterprises to put company names on the 
stadium, team uniforms, campus shuttle 
buses, book jackets sold at the campus 
bookstore, plastic cups at food service 
points, or even on home pages? Will uni­
versities sell the names of entire schools 
as well as of buildings? Worse yet, will 
some schools be tempted to accept en­
dowed professorships to which the spon­
sors seek to attach unacceptable or harm­
ful restrictions and conditions? There ap­
pears to be no end to the opportunities. 

To respond to these and similar trou­
bling questions, Bok’s two concluding 
chapters lay out practical steps the aca­
demic community might consider to 
avoid sinking into a quagmire of commer­
cialism in which the academy is sure to 
lose control of both its integrity and its 
autonomy. Throughout his work, Bok re­
minds his readers of the obvious, but 
sometimes camouflaged (or ignored), dis­
tinction between the academy and com­
merce: The mission of the former is to 
learn, that of the latter to earn. Conflict 
between these missions is inevitable, and 
should it disappear, the university as we 
know it also may vanish. We may not like 
what replaces it. 

Paper, ink, typeface, and other ele­
ments of the graphic arts powerfully in­
fluence a book’s efficacy as an educational 
instrument. Universities in the Marketplace 



80 College & Research Libraries 

does not disappoint. In fact, it excels. The 
book’s felicitous graphic design is an 
enormous help to reading ease and com­
prehension. Princeton did not stint on the 
leading between lines and paragraphs. A 
less generous publisher might have pro­
duced a very much cheaper and shorter— 
but far more difficult to read—book. In 
respect to references, it is easy to move 
from text to endnotes because the latter 
have convenient running titles listing 
both chapter number and chapter name. 
It is a mystery why all publishers of schol­
arly texts do not follow this obviously 
reader-friendly design. 

Although Bok’s writing is admirably 
clear and succinct, occasional grammati­
cal and spelling lapses irritate. Half a 
dozen times, the author associates a sin­
gular subject with a plural pronoun (e.g., 
“Everyone must do their part”). But cor­
rect usage occurs very often. Why these 
exceptions? Norbert Wiener ’s name is 
rendered correctly on page 140 but be­
comes Weiner two pages later. 

The index is more than acceptable, even 
though entries for some topics are incom­
plete and a few are missing (e.g., gene 
splicing, a topic discussed in some detail). 
Although many endnotes are indexed, a 
memorable and damning quotation from 
Peter Drucker, “The business schools of the 
U.S. set up less than a century ago have 
been preparing well-trained clerks,” is not 
easily retrieved because it appears in an 
unindexed endnote. Although Bok focuses 
almost entirely on the United States, he 
cites cogent analysis from two Australian 
scholars, Marginson and Considine, who 
deal with the “enterprise university” in 
that country. Yet, there is no easy way to 
find their critique because there is no in­
dex entry under Australia. Readers are 
much more likely to remember the coun­
try than the authors. 

Bok, who was president of Harvard 
from 1971 to 1991, is surely among the 
most highly qualified educators able to 
discuss these issues. His work is neither 
a diatribe against commercial involve­
ment nor an inventory of despair but, 
rather, a fair and balanced presentation 

January 2004 

of the complete range of factors that a 
university must consider before establish­
ing a permanent liaison with the commer­
cial sector. Bok maintains clearly and per­
suasively that if responsible officers in 
higher education fail to manage business 
connections aggressively, the goals of 
higher education will continue to be in 
jeopardy. There is even the possibility that 
some undesirable changes in universities 
could become irreversible. In each major 
area—athletics, scientific research, and 
higher education—Bok administers such 
powerful blows that one is reminded of a 
champion prizefighter knocking out one 
contender after another. His work serves 
as a warning that overintimate links to 
commerce may put at risk a university’s 
most precious resources—its academic 
integrity and its credibility among the 
community of scholars, the public, and 
the government. He asks academic ad­
ministrators to consider whether such 
dangers outweigh the supposed benefits, 
whether academic leaders really want 
their universities to enter into “Faustian 
bargains” with industry. 

How many times have you wished for 
a book that illuminated an exceedingly 
complex social issue with a brilliant, 
glareless lamp, a book written with a 
wonderful economy of words, in a felici­
tous style, free of jargon, with keenly ana­
lyzed arguments presented in direct, eas­
ily comprehensible language? Derek 
Bok’s Universities in the Marketplace fulfills 
such a wish and does so brilliantly. It 
should be in the library of every research 
university and on the must-read lists of 
presidents, provosts, deans, principal in­
vestigators, technology transfer officers— 
and maybe on the reading lists of some 
coaches, as well.—Allen B. Veaner, Univer­
sity of Arizona. 

1. Currently, five biotechnology compa­
nies are suing Columbia to invalidate the 
university’s revised patent filings. (“3 More 
Biotech Companies Sue Columbia Over 
Patent,” New York Times, National Edition, July 
16, 2003, p. A19.) 



Book Reviews 81 

2. Arizona state-supported universities 
may soon be next in lining up for connections 
to industry. In 2003, the state legislature en­
abled the Arizona Board of Regents to buy 
stock in a company in the expectation of profit 
sharing following successful commercial ex­
ploitation of university research. 

Charleston Conference Proceedings 2001. 
Ed. Katina Strauch. Westport, Conn.: 
Libraries Unlimited, 2003. 222p. $45 
(ISBN 1591580730). LC 2003-535343. 

The Charleston Conference has once 
again produced a volume of stimulating 
discussions on issues challenging today’s 
libraries and librarians. These papers (28 
in all) were given at the 2001 conference, 
the twenty-first annual meeting that tra­
ditionally brings librarians, publishers, 
and vendors together to cover an array 
of topics of interest to all librarians, but 
especially to those working in acquisi­
tions and collection management. Domi­
nating the discussions (or at least present 
as a pervasive subtext in most of the pa­
pers) is recognition of the increasingly 
uneasy relationship between librarians 
and publishers/online vendors over the 
issues of access and price schedules. This 
conflict is most apparent in the negotia­
tions between librarians and online seri­
als vendors, and a number of the confer­
ence papers either outline the problems 
or try to explain some of the factors that 
have brought us to this state of affairs. 

Indeed, Tom Sanville (OhioLINK) 
takes on the librarian–vendor issue di­
rectly in his thought-provoking keynote 
address entitled “The Trends They Are 
A’Changing.” He explains one of the 
major reasons for the current chaos: We 
are all, he says, directly and daily faced 
with constant change in so many vari­
ables (technology, publishing practices, 
pricing, user needs) that “it’s impossible 
for us to really know what we’re doing.” 
To make matters worse, few, if any, of 
these variables are under our control. The 
goal of OhioLINK (and any library) is to 
provide “economically sustainable in­
creased information access,” but libraries 
are losing ground each year trying to meet 

this ideal. In the short term, we must be­
come better, more discerning buyers of 
databases and database packages. Per­
haps we must even say no to subscrip­
tions to enormously expensive online 
“package deals” and turn our attention 
to what is actually needed and used by 
our clientele. We no longer can offer our 
patrons the entire universe of knowledge 
from which to make their selections; it is 
need and usage that should be the decid­
ing factors in our purchases. 

A counterview is presented by David 
Goodman (Princeton) and Chuck 
Hamaker (UNC, Charlotte) in their paper, 
“Debate: Resolved, The Only Remaining 
Purpose of the Library Is as a Social Cen­
ter.” They note the increasing trend 
among faculty and students to use 
OCLC’s WorldCat or the RLG catalog 
rather than the local library’s catalog. “[I]f 
we had the copy it would show up first 
and if we didn’t, they would at least know 
it existed.” Similarly, maintaining that the 
goal of an academic library is, indeed, to 
provide the entire universe of informa­
tion to our clientele, Goodman reasons 
that almost every journal in the world will 
be used at some point in an academic li­
brary. 

David Kohl (U. Cincinnati Digital 
Press) in his paper, “Mass Purchase ver­
sus Selection,” presents the view that tra­
ditional access (i.e., ownership) to print 
journals was never very extensive to be­
gin with. A study of Ohio academic librar­
ies revealed that the average number of 
journal titles actually owned by a library 
was only around 25 percent of potentially 
useful titles. Kohl advocates the new 
model of acquisition (publisher packages) 
because it is consortial, inflation is nego­
tiated, and the individual library pays a 
little more but gets a lot more for its 
money (including access to all of a 
publisher ’s journals); all three elements 
benefit the library. 

Vendor viewpoints also are well rep­
resented in this volume. Presenters in­
clude staff from Elsevier, EBSCO, Green­
wood, John Wiley, Serials Solutions, and 
Total Information, Inc. Sensitive to the li­