Editor,
This is a response to the information in the Albuquerque Journal editorial published Monday regarding the UNM Science and Technology Park called “UNM Making Strides in Research, Retention.” Someone should help the public and students look closely at what goes on under the disguise of research at UNM. The Journal is sure not going to do it, as evidenced by the aforementioned editorial.
It does not take a rocket scientist to see something is wrong when a public educational institution such as UNM spends $220.5 million, which includes student tuition money, to subsidize high-tech private-sector research to gain back $3.1 million that this is a failing proposition. And it has been going on for almost two decades now.
Just how much has been wasted of the public’s money on what is essentially a public taxpayer subsidy to lower the cost of research and development for private-sector for-profit firms, entrepreneurs and federal projects is the question to ask, and how to shut this down, this bleeding wound on what is supposed to be higher education. This is the outcome of what began several decades ago as innovative public-private partnerships to supposedly help the education of our students. It has become just the opposite, a subsidy of the for-profit business community.
It turns out to be another cart-before-the-horse arrangement where the public underwrites profits for the private sector, under the disguise of advancing educational opportunities for students. It is just more crass cronyism, capitalism and privatization of the public sector. It is interesting that the Journal will run an article on how the Rio Grande Foundation is questioning UNM’s public hospital expansion, but the Journal becomes a cheerleader when the private sector is benefiting from UNM’s support for the high-tech research sector.
One might surmise that the Journal and their friends at the RGF may be moving to privatize UNM’s hospital expansion too by throwing up road blocks to better public health services.
Robert L. Anderson
Daily Lobo reader
