Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ucla-cs!zen!ucbvax!hplabs!hplabsz!taylor
From: haas@CS.UTAH.EDU (Walt Haas)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: University Education and Industry Needs
Message-ID: <1242@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM>
Date: 18 Dec 87 02:27:03 GMT
Sender: taylor@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM
Lines: 125
Approved: taylor@hplabs

Kurt Guntheroth writes, in part;
 
> If a manufacturer had a monopoly on technology, then improvements in the 
> technology would still be desirable to them.

No it wouldn't.  The thing that is desireable to a manufacturer is to control
the marketplace so it can be milked for maximum profit.  About 15 years ago
I was a systems programmer at a certain ivy league computer center.  We
wanted to install better technology there.  However the better technology
was provided, not by our mainframe vendor, but by a third party.  The
salesman for the mainframe vendor went as high as a vice president of the
university with stories that I was sabatoging the computer center with this
choice of better technology.  Fortunately this guy was ignored by the
university administration, the third party hardware was installed, and
I was fully vindicated.  Lesson:  some vendors find it more profitable to
market crap aggressively than to provide a better product.  They will
stab competent professionals in the back, lie, and cheat to do this.

> If companies competed, than research suppressed at one university would be
> carried out at another.

Only if you can guarantee that:

1. competition is indeed free.  See above.

2. alternatives are well funded.  There is rarely funding from industry
   for truly basic research, since it takes so long to pay off.

> If my company endows a university with a million dollars, why shouldn't they
> get to direct, at least in a general sense, the form of research done with
> that money.  Apparently this is poison to a great many acedemicians, but on
> what grounds?

Industry exists to make a profit.  In order to accomplish this it needs
to minimize risks and produce a fairly quick payout.  I used to run an
industrial "R&D" group.  I was not permitted to get involved with any
technology that couldn't be converted to practical application quickly.
Needless to say we didn't make any major advances while following these
rules.

> It is groundless to claim that only professors know best what
> avenues of research will be fruitful, or that only undirected, basic
> research leads to knowledge.

I think it's perfectly justified to claim that the existing University
environment is better for developing technology that won't show a profit
for ten or more years.  I'm not responding directly to your statement because
it makes a black-and-white statement about a situation with a lot of gray
scale in the real world.

> Companies endowing universities don't want them to do narrowly targeted
> research.  Universities are too leaky to make them safe places to carry
> out product engineering.

What about all those beta test boxes downstairs?  What do you call that?
What about all the software we port to this or that computer in exchange
for a deal on the price?  This is certainly not research.

> Companies only want to encourage research that is in areas which may be
> especially beneficial to their industry.

Yes, and the quicker the benefit is produced the better.

> Why is this idea dangerous?

Because it would:

1. Reduce or eliminate basic research.

2. Give large affluent companies the ability to stop small aggressive
   companies from getting access to new technology.

3. Increase concentrations of wealth and power in large companies
   that are risk-averse.

> Is it only dangerous to professors, who have traded big salaries for a
> totally unstructured environment?  

Very funny.  No, it's dangerous to everybody who benefits from better
technology.

> Is it just that they are used to being very big fish in a pond full of
> easily pushed-around undergrads, and suddenly somebody comes by who might
> potentially be able to tell them what to do?  Is there indeed something
> about PhD's at a university which makes them more insightful or
> imaginative than PhD's in Industry?

PhD's in industry don't usually run the whole industry.  Most large
corporations are actually run by businessmen, lawyers and accountants.
An example of the result was experienced by a certain state university
whose computer center was operating a mainframe built by a company
with a factory in that state.  The architecture of the system was obsolete
and the people at the university wanted to unload it and get something
more modern.  The officers of this company went to the governor and told
him they would close their factory if the university dumped their computer.
Pressure was brought to bear... but it wasn't because of the relative
merit of the ideas of industrial PhDs versus university PhDs.

Another example of this effect was experienced by a friend of mine who
was one of the group who developed a new method of isolating clotting
factor from human blood.  This  factor is now used to treat hemophiliacs
with good results.  At the time there was a commercial method of isolating
clotting factor that didn't produce a very good product.  One day some
representatives of the vendor of that method came around to my friend's
lab and started bugging the labniks about what their new method was like
and what effect it would have on the marketplace.  They didn't go so
far as actually sabatoging the research, but it was clear that they weren't
in any big hurry to give up their market either.

> [My opinions are my own.  They are less polite than the opinions of my
> employer, John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., which contributes to university 
> education without expecting or getting measureable return from it.]

Hm?  Where does John Fluke hire engineers and computer scientists?  Where
are the basic laws of nature used in John Fluke products first discovered?
I would assert that John Fluke gets major returns from investment in
universities, like every other high-tech company, but can't show a tight
enough feedback loop to please the shareholders.  That would be about
typical in my experience.

Incidentally in case you think I've been picked on and my experiences
are not typical, the three stories above involve three different
universities and three different companies.

Cheers  -- Walt Haas