“The stalemate (in the Land-Grant System) is due to mindset, uncertain mission, ineffectual leadership and inappropriate organization.” Dr. James Meyer, Chancellor Emeritus, UC-Davis, 1997.

Not long ago one of us casually mentioned to an Editor in Ag Communications that Auburn and the Land-Grant Universities were in a death spiral. Her instant response was, “No, Bob. We are not in a spiral, we are in a free-fall!” Free-fall or death spiral--either way, there will be a big bloody “splat” when the falling object meets ground zero.

Land-Grant universities (LGU) began in 1862 with a social contract to be the “peoples’ universities.” In the same year, President Lincoln started the “peoples’ agency,” later to become USDA. Both sets of institutions grew out of the democratic notion of economic justice – scholarship, research, education and service to benefit the common citizen.

To some extent LGUs have become a victim of their own success. Enormous gains in agricultural productivity and in the well being of people from all social and economic classes can be traced to the American LGUs carrying out their original mission. But now there are problems. In the last few decades, the agency intended to represent farmers and consumers – USDA – has often behaved as USDA, Incorporated, while the LGUs have become no different from thousands of private and other public universities and colleges, often frothing at the slightest possibility for the almighty corporate dollar for research or bricks and mortar.

What happened? Incentives changed. If all of economic knowledge were condensed into two words, they would be “incentives matter.” Although a book could be written on why and how the LGUs strayed from their social contract, this short article will highlight a few critical developments that generally changed incentives, moving the LGUs away from their social contract.
One critical development was the Bayh-Dole University and Trademark Act of 1980 (P.L. 96-517). This Act fundamentally altered the ownership of “intellectual property” (patents) developed with federal dollars, essentially transferring ownership to the private sector. The stated intent of the Act was to encourage universities to collaborate with business so that technology would be commercialized, presumably benefiting citizens.

Universities were to give preference to small businesses under the original 1980 Bayh-Dole Act. But the scope of the Act was expanded through a 1983 Memorandum from President Reagan to the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies to include large businesses, a Memorandum which Congress endorsed in a 1984 housekeeping action.

For all practical purposes, the Bayh-Dole Act moved control of considerable agricultural technology developed by LGUs and USDA, particularly seed and chemical patents, from the government to businesses. Certainly some of the technology transfer helped people. But the downside of this Act is that universities went from having arms-length transactions with the corporate world to being in bed with big businesses, many of them giant transnational corporations. Although only 5-10% of LGU faculty actually deals with patentable ideas, incentives under the Bayh-Dole Act shifted a proportionally greater amount of federal and state support to technology transfer.

A second critical development was decreasing state and federal support. Federal cuts in Extension funding in 1983 marked the beginning of the downward trend in public support for LGUs. In the 1980s most Ag Deans and Directors anticipated that they were on a downward trend in federal and state support. Yet many administrators, rather than live within their means, responded to internal pressure and often made the decision to keep faculty positions (Administrators also face perverse incentives!). Keeping faculty came at the expense of the support base. Now many ag faculty no longer have adequate support funds to conduct research and outreach programs. Consequently they must seek grants.

Allocation of federal agricultural research funds also changed, as some of the funding was channeled into so-called competitive grants available to any university, LGU, non-LGU state university, or private university.

Who has the grant money? USDA has funds, which allows bureaucrats to have more influence on the research agenda than local people. Big business has funds, which allows corporate interests rather than local interests to set the research agenda. Business is particularly interested in funding university research because they can capture benefits by patenting the ideas generated by faculty. Worse yet, corporate grants typically leverage some public support, which is nothing more than a taxpayer subsidy for research to aid corporations with billions in profits.

A third critical development is that faculty turned inward. Past LGU successes came from the universities being “connected” to the general public and from being responsive to that public. Now many are simply conducting research and publishing for their peers, or chasing funding. As LGU faculty turned inward, they became increasingly disconnected with agriculture and unresponsive to people needs. In short, faculty became privateers in an Ivory Tower.

What do the Land-Grants mouthpieces have to say? The following quote, from C. Peter Magrath, Current President of National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, is typical of the political rhetoric we hear.

“America’s state universities and land-grant college – all of them truly peoples’ universities – are a marvelous enterprise that has served our nation superbly. They are fundamental to our democratic system and essential to our aspirations for a better, more just future. These universities are a critical part of public higher education, and they are essential to the well-being of our nation’s economy and society.”

Fact, unfortunately, rarely fits the rhetoric in these challenging times.
Booker T. Whatley, a product of the 1890 Land-Grant universities, gave a more realistic assessment:

“My quarrel is with the land grant college bunch, because they very seldom have a really new idea, let alone one that’s going to do something good for the farmer. They all think exactly alike. Why is that? They were trained to think that way. They all went to the same schools and listened to the same bunch of professors who had done exactly the same thing when they went to school. It’s like a big social club, a fraternity. And everybody thinks everybody else is just great, because they all think the same way.”

No new ideas? They all think the same way? (Or don’t think at all?). Troubling, but too often true.
The academic social club Booker T. mentioned is not a new problem. The Romans referred to the practice of academics glorifying each other as asinus asinum fricat. Literally translated this means
jackasses rubbing jackasses!

A convergence of problems with peak oil, global warming, environmental degradation, carbon sequestration, bio-terrorism, free trade, vertical integration, consolidation, low farm income, declining rural areas, an unsustainable trade deficit, unsustainable American debt, growing corporate control over government, and many other social and economic issues has led one writer to say that the emerging era may become known as “the long emergency.”

Periods of stress – emergencies – often provide the most opportunity. Will the peoples’ universities – the Land-Grants – seize this opportunity to help people avoid a long emergency, or at least to help them through a long emergency? Not if we continue down the path of the last several years.

Tremendous talent remains in the LGUs that could be called on to help people solve problems, or to help people take action before emerging problems develop into emergencies. Incentives in the LGUs need to be re-aligned to fit their original social contract. Who will lose if we do not change? All of us – the people.RT