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Sydney Morning Herald

Monday October 19, 1998

GEESCHE JACOBSEN

Corporate sponsors have been funding university chairs for decades, but there is concern about where altruism stops and interference starts. GEESCHE JACOBSEN reports.

AUSTRALIA does not have a Kmart chair in retail studies but closer links between universities and big business mean questions are being asked about just how close the two sectors should be.

Corporate sponsors have been funding professorships, or "chairs", at Australian universities for decades. They represent one facet of closer industry- university links and they are saving universities millions of dollars every year.

But in comparison with the United States, the tradition is underdeveloped in Australia.

The executive director of the Business-Higher Education Round Table, Professor Ashley Goldsworthy, said business should do more to help universities attract the top academics.

There was not enough corporate sponsorship, not enough altruism in Australia, according to Goldsworthy.

"Business should be much more forthcoming in endowing chairs than they have been in the past," he said.

"To attract the top academics and researchers in the world you need money. These are the sort of people that make a difference to a university, and endowing chairs helps universities to attract top people."

But sponsored chairs are not entirely without controversy in the university community. The latest sponsorship deal is a new Chair of Software Technology at the University of Sydney, sponsored by Bankers Trust.

The deal has caused a bit of a stir, raising concerns about the input the company is having into course development.

Universities are defending the practice, saying external funding allows them to develop courses they might not otherwise offer. And, according to Goldsworthy, fears that academic freedom might be compromised are "nonsense".

The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney, Professor Gavin Brown, said that so far all of the negatives had been theoretical and all sponsorships had brought considerable benefits.

He conceded that in the past universities might have been a "little careless" in this area. "We have got to be careful that any arrangement entered into preserves the university's independence," he said.

At Sydney University, Bankers Trust will be funding more than half the cost of establishing the software technology chair under a three-year arrangement, which was put to the university's senate two weeks ago.

The chair, which comes with a base salary of over $92,000, will allow the establishment of new courses in the field of object technology, a modern field in software development.

According to members of the senate, the arrangement caused some misgivings with some members feeling they were confronted with a fait accompli.

One member said the deal was unprecedented because it came with the condition that the university would agree to put on a particular course for BT personnel.

Others raised concerns that funding was limited to three years, while the position had to be advertised as a continuing position.

The professor, once appointed, will develop courses in object technology for senior undergraduates and a master's degree in the computer science department.

Bankers Trust, which has more than 300 staff working in the field, will initially be sending about 30-35 staff to the new course in 1999, with a view to sending more staff in the future.

The executive vice-president of BT Investment Bank technology, Greg Baster, said specific tutorials would be developed for BT employees attending the course.

BT would also be sitting on the advisory board which develops the course syllabus, he said.

"By being involved with the university we can to some extent direct part of the content of the course to those sorts of things that we are trying to solve in our business here," Baster said.

Professor Brown defended the arrangement, saying the idea of customising training in a particular program as part of a deal with a company seemed perfectly acceptable and "entirely healthy". "One goes out of one's way in any case to have input from various different industry and business groups to make sure that our courses are relevant and appropriate, and this, in a sense, guarantees that there will be that feedback," Brown said. GREG BASTER, Executive vice-president, BT Investment Bank technology Sydney University has about 40 named chairs, Brown said, many of them in medicine, seven in science and technology, and three in law.

The University of NSW has about 11 sponsored chairs, among them five at the Australian Graduate School of Management and four in the engineering faculty.

Most of the sponsors are major corporates, such as the National Australia Bank, the Commonwealth Bank, AMP, BHP and some of the leading law firms.

UNSW's Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Chris Fell, said the university encouraged endowments which could fund chairs on an ongoing basis, or for at least five years.

"It's an opportunity to work with industry and commerce and develop further academic positions over those which we get government funding for," Fell said.

While Professor Goldsworthy called for sponsorship for altruism's sake, for Bankers Trust the chair, its first in Australia, solves a more concrete purpose: the lack of skilled staff.

The bank's current staff have developed their skills over many years, but the new course would offer a quicker, more intensive training method, said Baster. He said that having the BT name given to the chair was "very nice but not a prime driver".

"The key problem . . . is we have got to really provide an education for staff to get them up to the level that we want and keep them at that level."

Brown said sponsoring a chair helped the university supply a training need it could not meet unless companies shared in the cost of providing it.

"It gives us an opportunity to provide new developments in areas where our own resources would not allow us to do it."

A growing relationship with industry might also lead to other collaborative projects, which would benefit both sides, he said.

However, the universities might be faced with the decision to abolish a chair if the sponsorship money dries up after a few years.

Under the recent Higher Education Contract of Employment award, universities can no longer advertise fixed-term contracts, and so any new chairs have to be offered on a permanent basis, whether or not the funding is continuing.

While some senate members were concerned, both BT and Sydney University are confident their collaboration will continue after the initial three years to which BT has committed itself.

The position has been advertised internationally, and BT will not have a say in the selection of the candidate, while the course outline needs to be approved by the faculty.

Ethics guidelines and other procedures cover such issues as property rights which might arise from joint industry-university research projects, while assessment guidelines might help with the question of marking assignments from employees of the corporate sponsor of the professor's chair.

UNSW's Professor Fell said very strict conditions were laid down for sponsored chairs and so far the experiences had been positive.

"We've found it very worthwhile," he said.