Beware the corporatization of universities

Shane Wade
Opinion Editor

At what price will we sell in order to gain?

That’s the question all university officials should be asking themselves now, after Florida Atlantic University sold the naming rights to their $70 million football stadium for $6 million to GEO Group, a private prison company that faces allegations of neglect and abuse from various groups, including students, staff and faculty at FAU.

GEO Group’s founder, George Zoley, is an FAU alumnus and agreed to pay $500,000 to the university for the next 12 years in exchange for the naming rights to the university’s new stadium. Students responded by renaming the new home of the FAU Owls “Owlcaltraz,” according to local Boca Raton newspapers.

It’s understandable why FAU accepted the $6 million donation. At a time where Congressional officials would rather spend 13 hours filibustering the inevitable nomination of a CIA director than resolving the national sequestration threatening to ruin public education as we know it, people will take money wherever they can get it.

Money’s tight. Cash is cash. Officials can’t afford to be picky.

FAU president Mary Jane Saunders said as much in a press release regarding the deal. She evaded questions about the prison company’s dodgy past and called the matter a “done deal.” FAU’s administration decided that, despite student and faculty protest and obvious moral contradictions of accepting money from an questionably unethical organization, the benefits of profit outweighed the risk of outcry and contradiction.

There’s also an argument that, if a university doesn’t have a spare $70 million to build a football stadium, they shouldn’t build it, no matter how lucrative or profitable it might be in the future. Football, although deeply loved, isn’t essential to achieving the educational goals of an academic institution.

But, on some level, whether the allegations against the private prison company have truth to them or not is almost beside the point.

There’s a deeper question university officials around the country should be asking themselves: At what price will we sell out in order to gain more? Are public education institutions independent meccas, branches of the state or business entities?

VCU itself relies heavily on both alumni and private donations. The reality of our university is that we’re not going to be well-funded by the state government unless serious reforms take place. For public university administrators, we’re entering a brand new world in terms of funding academia. The government well is drying up and students are parched.

FAU sold out to a corporation to the tune of $6 million. It’s deeply concerning that the benefactor is a shady private prison firm, but it would also be concern if they had sold out to any other big business or organization because of the message that action sends to the community and the public: Public schools are being underfunded and neglected by federal and state governments.

This is more than a story about a university accepting a hefty donation from a suspicious company. It’s a story about the future of our public institutions and the corporatization of public institutions. At the end of the day, that’s the message they’re sending out: Our buildings are but billboards for your company’s name.

Recently, VCU has also been the recipient of a few large donations. Health Diagnostic Laboratories, a company based in Richmond, has announced a $4 million sponsorship to our athletic department to help fund improvements to athletic facilities.

In exchange, they will get their name on all VCU athletic facilities, similar to how the GEO Group will be display their name on FAU’s stadium. HDL’s donation is certainly more welcoming than that of a private prison company and helps to illustrate that there’s a duality to the issue.

Historically, some of today’s most esteemed universities, including Vanderbilt and Harvard, were utterly transformed by wealthy benefactors. But those benefactors were principled individuals, not amorphous companies.

Moreover, those universities are private. They receive significantly less aid from the federal and state government. If the trend of allowing companies to effectively buy their way into public universities continues, we might come closer to resembling private universities.

For public services in a sequestered economy, money rules. Funding for our public services will become more reliant upon “charitable” donations by wealthy people and companies seeking to diversify their funds and broaden their influence.

As a university and a community, it’s necessary for us to be aware of the motivation and resulting effects behind  lofty donations. We have a responsibility to be accountable for our image and reputation and its protection.