[jsaxton86]

One of the biggest problems with politics is that politicians need to raise a lot of money to get (re)elected. That money comes with strings attached, which makes it difficult for our politicians to make good decisions.

I had never considered that the same problem exists in academia, but apparently it does. Hamm has donated tens of millions to the University of Oklahoma, and it's pretty obvious he's trying to use his money to influence the direction of the University. I'm surprised it isn't working.

[nmrm2]

>I'm surprised it isn't working.

Remember this next time someone suggests getting rid of tenure or cutting federal research funding. Especially for areas of research that are politically or economically hot (climate/environment, privacy, etc.)

[Fomite]

Yep. This is the answer to "why do we need tenure".

[IndianAstronaut]

This is actually the main reason for tenure. It is to protect intellectual freedom. Granted, nowadays due to excessive abuses by lazy faculty, the whole system is likely to die a slow death.

[BrainInAJar]

> due to excessive abuses by lazy faculty, the whole system is likely to die a slow death.

That's true of a lot of systems; Tenure, unionization, welfare. It becomes easy to stir people in to a frenzy to eliminate the freeloader problem while the question of whether the institution is too important to care about freeloaders remains ignored. In all the cases, perhaps freeloaders are just part of the price for a valuable system, and we should accept it.

[mathattack]

What surprises me isn't that Universities need money, it's how cheap they're willing to sell themselves. $20 million allows one guy to push around a university with an endowment and budget both more than 50x that. [1]

Generally naming rights involve doubling the endowment of a school. And of course you get some added influence, but $20 million in Oklahoma seems like it wouldn't even pay for 5 years of the football coach's [2] (coach's, not coaches!) salary.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universiti...

[1] http://www.ou.edu/publicaffairs/oufacts.html

[2] http://www.coacheshotseat.com/SalariesContracts.htm

[ceejayoz]

> What surprises me isn't that Universities need money, it's how cheap they're willing to sell themselves. $20 million allows one guy to push around a university with an endowment and budget both more than 50x that.

That's not cheap when you compare it to politics. $5-10M a year for Lockheed Martin helps it win trillion dollar projects like the F-35. https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00000010...

[greenpresident]

Here is a description of the phenomenon, recently linked on daringfireball:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullock_paradox

[mathattack]

Interesting. I've also viewed it that the folks paying the economic rents are not coordinated enough to fight back.

[juliangregorian]

I was surprised when I found out about the Countrywide Loans guy[0], he was buying congresspeople for low 5 figures!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countrywide_financial_political...

[mathattack]

No wonder they say that lobbying is more efficient than R&D!

[Lawtonfogle]

>I'm surprised it isn't working.

Certain very direct actions may not work, but the ability for this funding to slowly corrupt the science produced is still very much a risk and the ability for the rich to influence the very discoveries that science makes is still something to be feared.

[crimsonalucard]

I read a book on this that describes the money/politics problem as two categories:

A Guardian Syndrome, and a Commerce Syndrome. Both syndromes are efficient and well when independent, but it's when the categories begin to merge that you begin to get problems and conflict of interest.

I recommend people to check out the book. It's a great analysis of the nature of corruption from a very cultural, anthropological and economic perspective. It's a refreshing angle from the typical character assassinations you see in the news. It's called Systems of Survival by Jane Jacobs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_of_Survival

[hackuser]

> the same problem exists in academia

This problem isn't unique to this story. As examples, look up Confucius Institutes or the Koch brothers (yes, them again) funding of colleges and programs.

It's not unique to private funds; federal funding is controlled, ultimately, but Congress, which brings politics into the mix. Public universities are ultimately controlled by state governments. Finally, politics affects schools directly; probably not many administrators want to sacrifice their futures to protect an unpopular professor. I'd be interested in seeing how our colleges and acedemics fared during the McCarthy witch hunts.

[semi-extrinsic]

I don't know the US system specifically, but industry usually has a say in how public spending on research (particularly applied research) is distributed. Usually the process is that they're consulted on what they think future prioritized research topics should be.

[ExpiredLink]

Vice versa, you are surprised that academia is working.