It could be true that only 20% of UBC's research is founded by corporations, but how many professors are on the payroll of multinationals ?

Universities, today, are the worst propaganda machines, where braindead and crooked politicians get their support for their anti human actions.

The UBC's, and all other universities' economics departments are nothing more than PR agencies for global corporate dictatorship in the name of "competitive equilibrium". The biggest idiocy ever invented by sick brains. How can an equilibrium be competitive, yet nobody dares to question such nonsense? Where are the other professors to demand answers, even for the fraudulent accounting systems used by economists?

I've asked this question many times in the past 20 odd years, but the only answer I could get was: "We can not interfere with other disciplines!"

A professor wrote to me once from Ontario, that at their university the students are tested for their capability and willingness to accept the teachings of the criminal neoclassical theory, even before they're accepted into the faculty and in many universities professors who questioned it were sent packing.

So much for "academic freedom"

Ed Deak, Big Lake.

Thoughtful, literate, detailed article. Well done. The kind of article that British Columbians would have read 20 years ago in an independant newspaper. Every time the Tyee keeps publishing these well researched pieces, another nail is driven into the coffin of monopoly print media. Monopoly print media is now dying the death of a thousand cuts. And has been replaced by real news through the internet. Thanks Stanley Trump and to the Tyee!

Stanley Trompis a fine writer. His talents are wasted on writing about this priveleged shiite. Why so muh crap on UBC?

Ed;

Dead on!

This is a very balanced perspective, and love her or hate her, Dr. Piper has left UBC changed - irreversibly. In some ways, UBC's stature has grown in the international community (in the top 40 world wide academic insitutions) - but the ties to commercialization has inevitably grown as well. I don't recognize the place now in comparison to when I first stepped on its soil 11 years ago - it's a little kingdom unto itself. UBC is among the top 10 patent holders in N. America - and I often felt uncomfortable with graduate students working for their supervisors' companies - cheap labour and an obvious conflict of interest. On the flip side, there have been major achievements as well. Like all things, when it gets too big - it ends up consuming itself. I look forward with interest as to how and which direction Toop will take it from here.

As an alum, I am proud of this accomplishment. I find myself stunned when people raise this as a concern. Should UBC sit around, wait and pray for government funding?

By involving the Business Community, the University has increased the quality of research facilities, but more importantly, student services and student facilities.

It has changed since the time I graduated approx. 15 years ago, and it is not the same. With all the good, comes some bad - parking is very expensive, and real estate prices have went up...

So what, this is what happens in a beautiful city like Vancouver.

Mostly bad Cappy, in terms of independence and not just serving the needs of capitalists like you and the people who expect 'value' not real research for the money. You might have understood that's what Avicenna was hinting at if you'd taken a bit of time to think about it. Which, interestingly enough, even working man seems to understand.

UBC has sold its soul - if it ever had one - parking is the least of it. Martha Piper can now take her reward from the corporate bagmen she's been facilitating since she took the post from strangway. Good riddance. Breakfast for the students indeed - what a pile!

Martha Piper... good ridance. What a sell out. The comments of other UBC students are more or lees in the same line. UBC is a dud. Students of colour suffer under the institutional racism prevalent at every level. Boy if I could reveal some stories... They are hair risers... Go toe Forestry faculty and look at the pictures from 1970 till present and there you will notice the rise in the policies of keeping non white students at bay.

Thanks Martha for an terrible university experience. Biggest mistake in my life was going to UBC. My faculty committed fraud and your management did NOTHING. Advertising a degree as a two year program when it takes a minimum three years minimum is outright fraud. It was brought to the attention of senior management who did nothing.

Oh... and thanks for cutting my TA position pay by 25% because there was no money, but on the same day $25K worth of posters that said "Think about it" went up around campus... yes.... think about it...

Searching through the complaints and the lawsuits filed against UBC is very reviling... oops I meant revealing!

Aaah..for the days of Walter Gage and Doug Kenney eh?

The Long Hikes from C lot .

In the " old days " pre Strangway the issues seemed to be the classic tuition fees, and ...? not much else ,at least not when compared to today.

The separation between Church and State was established years ago...I often mused the physical separation of most campuses from the City core had a bit of intentional irony , like the Galapagos Islands and the mainland.

In other words...kept the ivory tower and their Pursuit of Truth at a healthy distance. Now they have integrated right into society like some intellectual door -to -door salesmen, flogging education, producing experts ad nauseum..can't get enough of that!

What I see is a rather bizarre quasi-religion infiltrating society, and straying from its original roots to the point of separation .

The trickle down effect in my view is that University etc. should be even more accesible NOW than before. However, it apparently is NOT, so the question is, what has happened and what IS going on ?

Universities are becoing quasi- public sector corporations...so who ultimately gains? Real Estate development...patents....grants .. research funding...teaching staff on temporary contract vs tenure?

Where is the accountability and who is ultimately gaining ?

Seems to be another Gov't based -gov't empowered group running off in all directions...like a mad dog ...much like VANOC.

allmyrelations - you can't be serious - there are many things awry - but racism is definitely not one of them - at least not in the faculty I graduated from (Science). We can't change history nor the walls that showecase it - but looking at my graduation class (both undergraduate and graduate) and current colleagues in Medicine, there are greater traces of mercenary than discriminatory contaminants.

For those who objected to Piper's fund raising, consider how much support British Columbia has given to higher education. The taxpayers are never going to support a first class university, so other sources must be found.
Piper was fond of telling the rest of us how important civil society is. In most circles one of the main institutions of "civil society" is the labour movement. When President Piper faced a rather inept strike by the TA's union, she asked the government to legislate an end to the dispute. When the students protested peacefully at one entrance to the University, she sent the police to disperse them after a day, threatening to sue them individually.
Some respect for civil society when she was inconvenienced.

Piper deserves the realtor of the decade award for her work continuing the sale of UBC that began with Strangway. I acknowledge the praise for some of her work, but then, it's hard not to appear to be doing something decent as the president of a university, even if it is passing bromides about academic freedom and intellectual property rights, or arguing a commitment to democracy as holding student breakfasts.

I have been at the university during orientation week (paying library fines, what else?) and I was struck by the complete absence of anything resembling intellectual ferment--unless you count the tables by the Jesus people beckoning you to join them in prayer and bible study. The student union building was bursting with entrepreneurs hawking everything from shampoo-and-messages to monogrammed leather belts. I happened to be there when a man tried to set up a table of progressive books and pamphlets and was literally pushed out of the building by the security guard. He left without a fight because I think he looked at the scene inside and realized that what he had to offer would probably not do well in there.

The important question to me is whether the academic integrity of the university has been effectively compromised, as I think the faculties that attract corporate investment, business and some sciences, have done well--financially at least--while those that engage in the less profitable role of a community of scholars pursuing truth, the arts and the humanities, have been weakened beyond repair.

When I went to UBC starting in 1997, there was an introduction to campus offered to all the first year students. They toured the campus, learned a few facts, and at the end of this, attended a speech by President Piper.

She achieved fame and notoriety for sharing with thousands of students, on their first day, that they shouldn't feel alone at UBC.. because when she was a child, she had an imaginary friend named "Bort". The campus papers capitalized on this gaffe, and invoked the name of Bort in every questionable decision Piper made that year.

Just thought I'd share...