Exposing a corporate trend in higher education

Christian Humborg wants German universities and corporations to know: they’re being watched. As managing director of Transparency International Germany, an NGO that fights corruption, Humborg sees a troubling trend in German higher education, as more top-name universities embrace ‘strategic partnerships’ with business and seek to commercialise their research, writes Paul Hockenos for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Humborg’s group is working with the Free Association of Student Bodies, a student union group, and Die Tageszeitung, a left-leaning newspaper, to expose what they see as a creeping corporate influence on public higher education. Last year they started Hochschulwatch, or University Watch, a crowdsourced website that tracks university-business partnerships. “We’re not against corporations funding higher education, but we demand that the details of this cooperation be open,” Humborg said.
Full report on The New York Times site