<p>Katlia – I have been clear that I oppose public/private partnerships. But if schools and states persist in doing them, and as Barrons says, they are legally entitled to, then I say the taxpayers should say you guys go after the patent value and stop crying you need more money.</p>
<p>Well, a Ford costs pretty much the same as a Chevy too. A Big Mac the same as a Whopper. Competition will keep prices closer–not further apart. “Costs” in higher ed are pretty hard to really attribute anyway. Engineering costs more to offer than English. Is that factored in? </p>
<p>As far as I am concerned the law is right until it’s changed. That’s how the US works. You don’t get to make up your own list of laws. I might not like all of them but that’s my problem to work to change through the system.
Few schools make enough from patents to get that excited about anyway. Only a handful earn over $50 Million a year. </p>
<p>Here’s a good paper on the topic with slightly old numbers</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.asu.edu/president/p3/Reports/univResearch.pdf[/url]”>http://www.asu.edu/president/p3/Reports/univResearch.pdf</a></p>
<p>Well, that’s exactly what many research universities ARE doing at a growing rate. They’re tired of “crying” for more money which doesn’t come anyway. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, this solution does not help keep undergraduate tuition down/from rising, and does nothing for money-strapped non-research schools such as many state u campuses or community colleges.</p>
<p>Barrons, the survey says only a few schools earn over $50Million on patents. What the suvery doesn’t address is how much money off of patents where the research is done at schools and the patent ends up owned by a private corporation, or whether the rate of return on the patent is fair.</p>
<p>Of course they are and that was part of the intent of the research/patent law–to get these ideas/discoveries turned into patents and then jobs and money. You need to have a profit inducement to do that because it is not easy and takes both a long time and lots of money. Most will never make a dime. You need two good ones to make up for the 98 losers.</p>
<p>Who knows what is fair when you are dealing with new technology? You look for investors and cut the best deal you can. That is exactly why we need the government as far from this as possible. Private companies employ people and both pay taxes too. How far are you going to go to decide what is fair? Nobody knows in advance how any product will do in the 10 years it takes to go from patent to product.</p>
<p>Barrons, I agree that who knows what is fair is a very difficult question. Which is why I don’t trust these public/private partnerships. The private side will bargain so that they get what they want. Who bargains for the public? The school that employs the professor who works on the technology and owns the company that will use the patent? I do not have faith that it is a fair negotiation, and that the taxpayer’s side is represented well.</p>
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<p>Well, obviously I didn’t mean that the person is literally unfireable for any reason whatsoever. If a faculty member decides to commit mass murder or other heinous crimes, then obviously he would be fired. If you want to take everybody’s words to be literally correct in every single instance, then frankly, you would spend the rest of your life disagreeing with everybody about everything, and for no tangible outcome. {For example, if somebody says that children like candy, you might disagree with that statement by finding one child in the world that doesn’t like candy, but why do it? The substantive link between children and candy remains the same.}</p>
<p>They you never have dealt with WARF or any of the major university patent operations. They did not just fall off the turnip truck. </p>
<p>[Intel</a> settles patent suit with University of Wisconsin arm - Techworld.com](<a href=“http://news.techworld.com/data-centre/3203355/intel-settles-patent-suit-with-university-of-wisconsin-arm/]Intel”>http://news.techworld.com/data-centre/3203355/intel-settles-patent-suit-with-university-of-wisconsin-arm/)</p>
<p>[Business</a> & Technology | UW Madison’s patenting arm wins suit against Xenon | Seattle Times Newspaper](<a href=“http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2010700468_apusdrugcompanylawsuit.html]Business”>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2010700468_apusdrugcompanylawsuit.html)</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.forbes.com/home/free_forbes/2004/0524/120.html[/url]”>http://www.forbes.com/home/free_forbes/2004/0524/120.html</a></p>
<p>“The school that employs the professor who works on the technology and owns the company that will use the patent?”</p>
<p>I think the majority stock holders are more important than patents. That is how these professors get rich - very rich. It also leads to lieing(sp) about test results. </p>
<p>See who sits on the Board of Directors of Google.</p>
<p>“Who knows what is fair when you are dealing with new technology? You look for investors and cut the best deal you can. That is exactly why we need the government as far from this as possible.”</p>
<p>Such as stem cell research.</p>
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<p>I think what we’ve all neglected is that the author also proposed that “If the state legislature still wishes to continue the tradition of subsidizing college education for state residents, it could do so through scholarship funds based on residency, with subsidies given directly to students, not the university.” Hence, as long as the vouchers were large enough, state residents would still readily be able to afford CU, and possibly other schools as well. For example, a vouchers might be eligible to pay for any school - public or private - in Colorado. {I’ve often times wondered why Colorado state residents would enjoy state residency tuition subsidies only if they attended CU or another public university but not if they attended the private University of Denver.} A voucher system perhaps could even be implemented to subsidize the tuition of state residents who attend out-of-state schools, perhaps with the proviso that they return to Colorado after graduation or pay back the subsidy. After all, why shouldn’t a Colorado state resident who wants to attend Harvard not be provided a tuition subsidy, as long as he agrees to eventually return to Colorado?</p>
<p>Lying about test results seems to cut across all types of organizations. Even the government lies from time to time as needed.</p>
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<p>It would surely cost far far more than that - easily in 7 or even 8 figures - perhaps even more. Harvard is the #1 brand in the entire global higher education market. Think of all of the rich elites not only in this country, but around the world (let’s face it, especially in Asia), who would gladly pay millions upon millions to buy seats for their children at Harvard. Or think of all of the wealthy royal families and nobility in Europe and the Middle East who wouldn’t mind paying to send their (literally) princes and princesses to Harvard.</p>
<p>Stem cell research is being financed by many different sources. The Feds, private companies, and non-profits using their own money. UW has both public and private funded research in stem cells and they function under different rules. The Fed funded follow Fed rules and the private institute is not as limited.</p>
<p>[WiCell</a> Research Institute](<a href=“http://www.biotechprofiles.com/companyprofile/WiCellResearchInstitute.aspx]WiCell”>http://www.biotechprofiles.com/companyprofile/WiCellResearchInstitute.aspx)</p>
<p><a href=“Discovery Building | Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation”>Discovery Building | Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation;
<p>So if Harvard is at $1,000,000 and Yale and MIT and Stanford are at $50,000 I think you have vastly overstimated the interest in Harvard. Rich people are not that stupid.</p>
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From the student’s point of view, this is exactly what in-state tuition is, except no actual money trades hands.</p>
<p>The problem is with a voucher plan is, where is the money to pay for vouchers going to come from? If the state has no money to give the university more money, how do you think they are going to start handing out $20K checks to students to sign over to the school?</p>
<p>It’s disingenuous for the professor to suggest this as a possibility when he knows there is zero percent chance of it ever happening.</p>
<p>Most states spend closer to $8,000 or so per student for educational purposes. That won’t go to far at most OOS schools. Also having a major state U provides many more benefits than just educating kids. You want them taking that $8K to support Kaplan U?</p>
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<p>Yale, MIT, and Stanford could also likely charge in the millions. </p>
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<p>Umm…oh yes they are. And come on, you surely know it, for we all do. Rich people purchase frivolous multi-million dollar luxuries for themselves all the time. Dennis Kozlowski infamously spent $2 million on his own birthday party. Mswati III, the King of Swaziland, recently bought a flotilla of cars and a private jet for himself and his family, despite the fact that his countrymen are racked with poverty and AIDS. The Sultan of Brunei owns a personal fleet of over 7000 luxury or sports cars, including over 600 Rolls-Royces alone, pays millions every year for personal massage, acupuncture, and badminton coaching, and a personal Boeing 747 inlaid with gold trimmings, including a gold-plated sink. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia commissioned a 482-foot personal yacht, complete with an onboard private restaurant, opulent swimming pool and jacuzzi, accommodations whose quality have been compared to a 5-star hotel, and a lobby that is (ominously) a replica of the lobby of the Titanic (and you say that rich people aren’t that stupid?). Much of the impetus of the revolution in Tunisia earlier this year stemmed from widespread revulsion at the looting, corruption and spendthrift behavior of the deposed President and especially his family: his daughter being infamous for flying luxury meals by private jet to her beachside mansion, his son-in-law owning a pet tiger which was fed prime cuts of beef, and a recent family outing in Disneyland that was widely reported for featuring large entourages of bejewelled women, chauffeured in luxury limousines. Russian oligarchs and their free-spending ways have so dominated the haute couture markets in London that many luxury department stores are reportedly hiring Russian-speaking staff specifically to cater to the oligarchs’ wives and girlfriends. The largest yacht in the world is ‘The Eclipse’, owned by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, is complete with 2 helicopter pads, its own disco hall and its own missile defense system, and if that isn’t enough, its very own submarine…all reportedly for a cost of a ‘mere’ $1.2 billion.</p>
<p>[Eclipse</a> (yacht) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipse_(yacht)]Eclipse”>Eclipse (yacht) - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>So, given that the world’s truly rich routinely purchase frivolous luxury goods all the time do you really think they would truly balk at the notion of ‘buying’ a seat at Harvard (or Yale, Princeton, etc.) for their children at a price of tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars? If the Sultan of Brunei can own 600 Rolls Royces, 400 Ferraris, and live in a palatial estate of of nearly 2000 rooms, surely he can afford to pay millions to send his son to Harvard. Heck, in this case, the purchase might not even be frivolous (or, at least, less frivolous), but could instead be seen as an investment in both the child’s education and, more importantly, elite social networking opportunity, not dissimilar to how the elite Boston Brahmins of generations past used to view the Harvard experience.</p>
<p>And they need a Harvard degree to make them whole, right? They prefer English U’s anyway. Way more class. Most receive private tutor educations anyway. You don’t walk around in public at a college if you are them.
Not to mention it would bring the IRS down on them for violating the non-profit rules.</p>