http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/editorial/10546438.htm

ok, I admit it, I have absolutely no idea WHAT all the hoopla is about regarding "economic development"...yes, I have some notion about the need to "grow and nurture" private enterprise, patents, etc. etc. to stimulate new ideas, entrepreneurship and promote profit and invest capital.  How does this benefit academics?  How are our students in ALL fields enriched as a result of this so called birthing of business?  More places to eat or better and stronger backpacks?  Why is there a need for a taj mahal type building which so far seems to have only a handful of faculty and less than 50 students, many of them distance learners?  Yes, I assume there is the political backslapping for Lott from Thames and the grant money coming to USM from D.C.  But how will this directly impact the students and faculty (who are NOT in the so called field of economic development) and the community, state?  THis seems like a new age catch-phrase, not really new at all, haven't we always nurtured business and private enterprise in this very capitalistic society? 

And I guess my biggest and most puzzling inquiry....why should the Lott masoleum  take priority over the promised nursing building, our building is old, we have outgrown it, our accreditation stipulated that we improve our physical environment which we assured would be a new building (Albertson's, now Hudson's) and worst of all, it is a designated "sick" building, full of mold,yeast and who knows what other pathogens which could be sold as biological warfare agents.  We are all on so much medicine, mostly antihistamines and allergy shots, that the proposed drug testing of last year would have been a real challenge over in our building.  The rest of the faculty wouldn't have had to worry about their randum urine checks, ours would keep the checkers quite busy all the time.

Shot in the Dark

Here's one of my long-ago posts that I think answers some of your questions:

>Having just read Jean Moulin's post on the main AAUP page, I thought it might be a good idea to retrieve this posting from the FS Board.  Is there anything we can do about this move to turn USM from a great public resource into an engine of personal profit that only benefits a few?

>What we have here at USM under Thames is a "radical" (Dvorak's term) attempt to put public taxpayer money to private for-profit purposes.  The only thing terribly new about it is that it is occurring here in a public institution of higher education.  It is part of the trend that took off in the 1980s to eventually privatize all formerly public institutions, i.e. utility companies, prisons, aspects of the military, and so on to turn them into privately-owned for-profit companies that use their privileged position as recipients of taxpayer funds and as, in many cases, the sole supplier of a particular service in a given geographical area (otherwise called a monopoly).  Basically, areas of society that the government spent decades in building up from public funds are being converted to private use with little to no oversight and with questionable, indeed detrimental, impact on the population that is supposed to be served by that institution.  Some might blame the Republicans for this anti-New Deal trend in America, but the Democrats share in the blame and have yet to prove that they meaningfully oppose it.

What will that mean at USM?  At the least it will mean further development of the trends we are already seeing: money shifted to "economic development" (including athletics) and all emphasis for faculty production, student degrees, and community relations being shifted there as well - deemphasis of humanities and the arts (they don't generate profits for the institution), deemphasis of what was for centuries thought of as "education" (critical thinking, writing, communication, and analytical skills, except as they can be directly related to "economic development") - a PR machine that constantly says "economic development" is the great goal of all right-thinking, full-blooded Americans (with little to no proof to support the claim) - the belittling of students and faculty who don't "see the light" and go along with this obviously correct new direction - the conversion of all university services (such as food, printing, textbook sales, housing, health, and so on) to private companies who pay a fee in order to acquire a captive audience of consumers and then gradually over time offer less service for higher cost - the pursuit of and conversion of grant monies from the federal and state governments, foundations, and private sources that, though acquired through USM's status as a public university, go to support private companies via "economic development," and, finally, the centralization of administration and elimination of any meaningful input from students, faculty, staff, or parents: that's why USM is now run by people who know next to nothing about higher education but who know how to turn this great public resource into personal profit.

The main problem for this attempt to highjack higher education is that the public generally does not agree with it.  But, unless hell is raised (as it has been lately), the public will never get to vote on these radical changes or otherwise affect the direction that Thames & Co. is taking USM.  If the pressure is maintained then the burden of proof is on Thames & Co.: they must demonstrate that turning USM into a money-making venture genuinely benefits students (other than those in Polymer Science) and that it fulfills the educational (as opposed to the economic) goals of the state of Mississippi.  Should economic development really be the end all of a public university?  Is that all that we want our students to know and treasure?

Especially when combined with Robert Campbell's very detailed & astute analysis.