Daily tip Trojan
Volume LXVIII,. No. 103
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, California
Monday, March 29, 1976
Faculty consulting:
By Cathy Taylor
It is said that 800 years ago, at the University of Bologna in Italy, professors had to obtain permission from their students and had to post bond in order to leave town on private business.
It’s not quite the same today, though University of California students are seeking legislation so they can keep a little better track of their professors.
In January, the University of California Student Body President’s Council passed a resolution that said all university faculty and staff should make an open disclosure of all their consulting activities. The resolution authorizes the UC Student Lobby to take up this issue in Sacramento.
The call for disclosure was based on a report by Charles Schwartz of UC Berkeley’s Department of Physics, which outlines abuses and conflicts of interest discovered in the ranks of university consultants.
The scope of the Schwartz report could not be duplicated on the USC campus.
Few similarities were found between the situation Schwartz set up in his report and the nature of consulting activities found here in the School of En-ginering.
The engineering department was chosen because in “A Statistical Portrait of Higher Education,” 1963, engineering was ranked just below law and the health fields as bringing in the most outside income. Also, the sciences were the target area ofthe Schwartz report.
“This is not an easy subject to learn about,” Schwartz writes. “I once wrote to George Maslach, provost of the professional schools and colleges on the Berkeley campus and former dean of the School of Engineering, trying to learn about the scope and nature of consulting activity.”
Schwartz said that Maslach replied, in part, “I have no knowledge ofthe extent of outside consulting by faculty and others; I have no knowledge of how many people consult, nor do I know how they have spent their time. There is no indication of how I can obtain this information in any easy way.”
In interviewing six chairmen of various departments in the USC School of Engineering, every one of them knew the nature of each consulting activity done by members of their faculty.
Clinton Ancker, chairman of the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department, said that everyone in his department has consulted or consults now. There are four current full-time faculty
professors moonlight off campus
members; generally there are seven or eight.
“USC’s School of Engineering has more control over that kind of activity (professors setting up consulting businesses) than other schools—UCLA for example. We keep track of outside activities within the department,” he said.
Most of the professors interviewed described activity reports that had to be handed in every semester. The form shows all the consulting work engaged in by an employee.
Schwartz’s report points out that information on individual professors’ consulting connections is not publicly available in any systematic form. The Office of Institutional Studies here has never attempted such an investigation, a representative said, and that since consulting was a private matter, the data might be difficult to obtain.
Fred Grodins, chairman of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, said, “Each faculty member must submit a statement of his consulting activities every semester. As far as our own department is concerned, it (a disclosure law) wouldn’t make any difference-most of us do anyway.”
The problems of consulting appear in the area of conflict of interest. Schwartz writes that there are several kinds of consulting relationships.
“I recently made a study of the membership of the two highest science advisory bodies in the federal government and found, not surprisingly, that the great majority of the people appointed to these bodies were academics, as opposed to people from industry or government agencies.
“However, what was surprising was that I was able to identify more than one-half of these academics as having significant personal ties to big business, mostly in the form of directorships in large corporations.”
Although none of the five professors was on the board of a corporation, two told about their work on advisory committees.
“I’m on a National Science Foundation and a National Institute of Health advisory committee and I had to submit a disclosure of all financial interests which might conflict,” Grodins said.
“Another kind of conflict that concerns the National Health Institute is
giving out scholarships to universities. What happens when an application from your own institution is considered? You’re disqualified.
“I think agencies as well as universities are very well aware of this and take precautions. I think they’re (abuses) pretty unusual,” he said.
John Laufer, chairman of the Department of Aerospace Engineering, said, “I’m on an advisory board for RAND, which is half government and half private. I’ve been on and off advisory boards, and many times there has been no monetary remuneration. Yes, I experienced conflicts of interest when I was on an advisory board and also consulting with a particular company. I checked into it and got several other people’s opinions, and it turned out to be O.K.”
Schwartz set up some of the abuses of this overlap in consultantships, and tells of a professor speaking out in favor of a
corporation’s actions, and then later discover that the professor was on the corporation’s payroll.
In The Anderson Papers by columnist Jack Anderson, he reveals the incident that occurred when the Federal Trade Commission was try to get International Telephone and Telegraph-Continental to rectify fraudulent advertising.
The government’s position was attacked in a series of speeches by Yale Brozen, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. The Brozen speeches were reprinted in the financial weekly, Barron’s.
Then, full-page ads, containing the text of the speeches, appeared in the New York Times and other newspapers. It later turned out that Brozen was on the payroll of the public relations firm handling the account.
The USC professors discussed the monitoring safeguards here; both those written and those not in written policy form.
Ancker said that a stipulation for a one-day-a-week limit is written into everyone’s contract. This limit, which is also set forth in the Faculty Handbook, is a fairly common standard that is also employed by the UC system.
“It’s clearly understood in the School of Engineering,” Ancker said, “that a 100% commitment must go to the university first. Consulting is a privilege that allows outside contacts for the professor’s help and a supplement to his income.”
Laufer said that consulting would be difficult to try to put on paper in legal terms; this type of rigid policy would make the system inflexible.
“Usually colleagues consult each other and discuss the question with the department chairman if there is any fear of conflict of interest—we monitor among ourselves,” he said.
Victor Weingarten, chairman of the Department of Civil Engineering, said he really doesn’t know of any conflicts of interest in his department.
“Zohrab Kaprielian (executive vice-president and dean of the School of Engineering),emphasized and spelled out policies on consultingto make sure all the departments were following. If conflicts did occur, they would be brought to Dean Kaprielian,” he said.
In a memo from Kaprielian’s office to the engineering faculty dated Sept. 22. 1975, reasons were given for the dean’s office requesting information about consulting and outside employment.
The first point says that outside activities shou-J nut conflict with fulltime faculty responsibiities. Secondly, accountability should be assured on government supported work. A review should be made of possible conflicts of interest, particularly where outside teaching is concerned.
Another reason for recording the consulting activities was to enable the dean’s and departmental offices to reach faculty members when necessary.
The form the dean’s office sends out requests who the faculty member is employed by, consulting for, or teaching for. It asks for days and times, and where the faculty member can be reached.
Weingarten has 15 full-time faculty, of which he said one-half or less all do consulting, but not on a regular basis.
Lyman Handy, chairman of the Department of Petroleum and Chemical Engineering, said, “I’m fairly strict in adhering to university rules. There are 10 on my faculty; I guess all of them have done it.”
He said that in the School of Engineering, students have more respect for professors that are sought after for consulting.
“But the primary responsibility is to USC,”he said. “We are much more stringent here than other departments I’ve known elsewhere.”
In an article entitled “The Corporate Connection” in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, (October, 1975), Schwartz said, “Remunerations paid by large corporations to their outside directors are typically in the range of $5,000 to $10,000 per year, and sometimes more.
“There are recurrent rumors that some professors double their academic salaries through consultant fees.”
Handy said the $10,000 was a good, rough average. “I’ve not done that well, but I’ve not sought that much.”
On the other hand, Weingarten said that $10,000 was too high an average for his department. He said that a lot of civil engineering firms aren’t hiring—if they have practical problems they have people that can do it. If a special problem arises, such as earthquake analysis, then they would seek university help.
(contvwed on page 1)