Knowledge Management

We all love lower taxes. As taxpayers we don't like giving our money away, as politicians they love to please us...after all its a government FOR the people BY the people. But there is no such thing as a free lunch, as my friend Shuvam Misra keeps repeating to me. SOMEONE has to pay. Its either people who can't afford to pay for everything themselves or its public property. An example is our public library system. Its a shame to see a natural resource so thoroughly neglected. Museums too, barring a few, are an eyesore... no they are heartbreak. We will not go into the long list of things that have to struggle for less and less funding like fish in a polluted pond struggling for oxygen.

The Prime Minister of India has created a "Knowledge Commission" to understand how India can "sharpen the Knoweldge Edge". In the meantime the production of knowledge is undergoing change. The reduction on government education means that less resources are going into schools and universities. While often parent's fund a child's school education, there are also issues about who invests in capacity building, better teacher training, etc.

But to me the matter of concern today is research in universities. Time was when the best research was conducted in universities and the results of this research was published in journals that were virtually free to other academicians. Increasingly research is restricted and more and more is done by private firms that fund research projects in universities too. The discoveries they make become proprietary to the companies and hence not available for public knowledge. The crisis in pharmaceutical sciences is just one such example. Roche is at present making a killing because of the bird flu pandemic (no it isn't a pandemic of the flu..yet..but a pandemic of anxiety, with people stocking up on the drug, some already beginning to take it as preventive...while the virus itself seems to have mutated into resistant strains).

The universities funded by public funds would do research on fundamental science while companies adapted fundamental science to suit their needs. The basic thought was always available free to anyone who could make good use of them. Somebody said "Information wants to be free", well it does seem that knowledge thrives in an open ecology and Universities provided just that environment for cross pollenation of ideas. Schools in the United States are meeting their costs through sales of Cola through their vending machines. Institutions of higher learning like the Indian Institute of Technology (note, this is not a pure science instute like TIFR or IISc) get funding from their alumni. Here is an interesting approach to the problem. IP2IPO is a firm that tries to convert the Intellectual Property of Universities in the United Kingdom to commercial ventures similar to the way NASA tries to spin off space research into products and services that can be used by consumers. I found them interesting. But the scotsman says that Scottish Universities are not happy with the "Exclusivity" that they require.

I wonder what is the next step in the struggle for funds by universities?