A report released November 2013 by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) stated universities that enter collaborations and agreements with donors compromise their own academic integrity.
The report, “Open For Business: On What Terms” evaluated 12 agreements between Canadian universities and external donors. It considers corporate and government influence on contract research collaborative programs within universities.
The universities examined include the University of Toronto, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, and the University of Calgary (U of C).
“In most of the agreements, the universities abandoned many of the features that are at the very basis of the universities’ credibility,” CAUT executive director James Turk said.
The report also considers ideas such as transparency and conflicts of interest within such agreements.
“We have some partnerships with major corporations where the president of the university and the chair of the board of governors are both on the board of directors of the company,” Turk said.
Only one of the 12 collaborations included provisions for the regulation of conflict of interests.
“In our view, those things shouldn’t be allowed. Or if they are allowed, they should be declared,” Turk said. “Ultimately the entire university community loses. As universities compromise the very things on which their integrity is based, then over time why would the public trust the university? If the university becomes simply an arm of industry, then the public reason to fund universities and the public reason to trust universities begins to disappear.”
CAUT’s report flagged U of C’s involvement with the Alberta Ingenuity Centre for In-Situ Energy in particular.
But the university’s vice-president (research) Ed McCauley said the report is not a fair assessment of U of C’s program and disagreed that U of C’s agreements sacrificed academic freedom.
“Our academic freedom at our institution is enshrined in our code of conduct and it applies to all agreements that we have protection built in to our university policies,” McCauley said. “It’s not necessary that a specific clause be in a particular contract to protect academic freedom, when that whole contract is governed by our general university policies and procedures.”
A collaboration between Western University’s law school and a law firm was also found potentially questionable by the report.
Western’s vice-president (academic) and provost Janice Deakin said such agreements benefit students in learning the specifics of a particular study from experts already working in the field.
“The agreement in question allows our students access to expertise that is of the highest standard and most directly related to this field of study and practice,” she said via email.
She said there were some limitations of the report’s evaluation of Western’s agreement.
“While the agreement provides that the University will work with donor to help identify qualified candidates to fill the Fellowship and Visiting Professorship, nothing in the agreement removes the rights and responsibilities from Western to choose the best candidates and to do so in accordance with university appointment policies and procedures.”
Turk said each university was contacted before the study began for information on the agreements and at some points CAUT even used access to information legislation to acquire the information.
He said it is important for universities to be honest about reporting agreements it has.
“If the university were being truthful with you, they would have to be truthful with the collaborating partner or donor by saying ‘Anything done in the name of the university and in partnership with the university has to have explicit recognition of academic freedom,’” he said. “There has to be a provision on the agreement. There can be no restriction on the rights of the researchers.”
