Academia's Star Professors and Their Corporate Connections: One Case Study

It's fascinating to watch college football during the holidays, but watching under-21s play without pay bothers me. The bowl games are a financial bonanza for universities, though they like to downplay that notion. Meanwhile, lots of "scholar athletes" play for free, while the U "monetizes" their gratis labor. It's scandalous that the players don't get paid, while the schools rake in the cash.

A 1930s photo showing a vaudeville-band act
serenading cows at the UW-Madison's Dairy Barn, in a scientific test
to determine whether soothing music would produce more milk.
(Photo from Wisconsin Historical Society.)

This observation connects to a larger theme, namely that American universities never really come clean about why education is outrageously expensive. These days, the cost to weave through the academic obstacle courses known as undergraduate and master's degree programs can reach a quarter of a million dollars. Parents of students, and students themselves, are told that the outrageously high cost of higher education just can't be helped. Meanwhile, universities raise tuition rates at double the nation's inflation rate, without even condescending to answer the question of sound fiscal management.

Sometimes, universities point to their salary structure and shrug their collective shoulders. What schools don't like to publicly air is that academia's top stars' and insiders' generous compensation packages are just the tjp of each school's "dream team's" financial bottom line. "Name" faculty members attract significant contracts for "research" or other tangible contributions to enterprises or big-time grant funding.

Dr. Thomas Zdeblick

A case in point recently emerged at my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison. According to an article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the school's Chairman of the Department of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation, Thomas Zdeblick, M.D., earned more than one million dollars in university compensation in 2010. But that's peanuts compared to the $25 million Dr. Zdeblick has earned in royalties since 2003 from the medical equipment firm Medtronic. Dr. Zdeblick, one of the nation's leading spinal surgeons, created a back surgery product called Infuse that Medtronic manufactures and sells.

As the Journal-Sentinel article noted, major league academic department chairs and paydays from pharmaceutical firms and medical device makers is hardly unusual. While ethical issues were noted in the article, the money is what stands out. I'm entirely in favor of inventors making money from their creations.  However, when a university hides behind "inflation" and sticks it to parents and students to pay so that academic stars are compensated to enrich themselves, that's a problem.

I doubt academic mandarins have any desire to resolve this issue. Why would they give up such a lucrative deal? In my view, parents and students have to rise up against this system and compel it to come clean. It's something to consider while you're watching unpaid "scholar athletes" compete in this year's corporate-sponsored bowl games.