In recent years, we have all watched the increasing commercialization of the campus. The numerous ad-vertising posters and the golden arches of fast food outlets may be an insult to our aesthetic sensibilities, butthey are, arguably, no worse than ugly. Some of the other new features of commercialized campus life do,however, constitute a serious threat to things we rightly respect. "Privatization" and the "business model"are the potential menace.

What do these notions mean? To me, they involve an increased dependence on industry and charitableactions for operating the university; an increased amount of our resources being directed to applied orso-called practical subjects, both in teaching and in research; a proprietary treatment of research results,with the commercial interest in secrecy overriding the public's interest in free, shared knowledge;and anattempt to run the university more like a business that treats industry and students as clients and ourselves asservice providers with something to sell. We pay increasing attention to the immediate needs and demands ofour "customers" and, as the old saying goes, "the customer is always right".

Privatization is particularly frightening from the point of view of public well-being. A researcheremployed by a university-affiliated hospital in Canada, working under contract with a medicine-makingcompany, made public her findings that a particular drug was harmful. This violated the terms of hercontract, and so she was fired. Her dismissal caused a scandal, and she was subsequently restored to herprevious position. The university and hospital in question are now working out something similar to tenure forhospital-based researchers and guidelines for contracts, so that more public exposure of privately funded research will become possible. This is a rare victory and a small step in the right direction, but the general trend is the other way. Thanks to profit-driven private funding, researchers are not only forced to keep valuable information secret, they are often contractually obliged to keep discovered dangers to public health under wraps, too. Of course, we must not be too naive about this.

Governments can unwisely insist on secrecy, too, as did the British Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries,and Food in the work they funded in connection with the bovine spongiform encephalopathy epidemic. Thisprevented others from reviewing the relevant data and pointing out that problems were more serious thangovernment was letting on.

From the first paragraph we can learn that the campus life has become__________ .

"Privatization" and the "business model" in this passage most probably mean__________ .

The author believes that we should pay__________ .

The researcher mentioned in the third paragraph was fired because__________.

It is implied in the passage that__________ .