Paying For Uni

[Lancer]

Ha! I forgot...I am going to be "paying for uni". In June Dolores and I start paying $20 a month for a poor young Filipino guy to go to college. He helps his parents at their sari sari store down the street from us. It's got a cool place to sit and have a cold one. Corner place that catches the breezes. Nice kid.

[Agathon]

I don't know about money making disciplines. I wouldn't swap doing ancient philosophy for any of them - it is simply a more interesting job.

As for the money - I am one of those people who makes a very bad consumer. Short of a computer, books and a good hi fi I don't want anything else - don't give a damn about clothes or cars or where I live.

Anyway, what's the point of being rich enough to afford the latest Quad system if you are only going to play Britney on it (having failed to spend college cultivating your tastes).

[Provost Harrison]

I agree. I am not much of a materialist, my problem is, I need to feel productive.

[Gibsie]

And yet you still post on Apolyton

[Provost Harrison]

Hehe, funny man

[Solly]

Mike, what's wrong with sponsorship?

[MikeH]

Well the example I gave earlier was when you get a conflict of interests between a big sponsor and a university's research. For instance an oil company sponsoring a chemical engineering department.

There are positive aspects to that as well of course.

[Solly]

At least then the uni is researching things relevant to making people more prosporous.

[MikeH]

Sure. But they could be researching something that would make different people more prosporous, for instance alternatives to oil based fuels.

[Solly]

Who says they aren't.

[MikeH]

Do you really think that there is no situation when a sponsor can't influence the research direction of a uni? What and damage their sponsor's major source of revenue?

[Solly]

I think a sponsor CAN influence a university's research, and when it does it can only be for the better.

[MikeH]

You are either extremely naive or have an extremely limited imagination then.

[Solly]

How can it not benefit?

[MikeH]

By persuading a department to send its research in a way which is not against the company's interests but which might be stopping the university researching something which could be beneficial to society as a whole.