Higher education is on the hot seat for ever-rising tuition, faculty members who don't teach classes, and degree programs that don't translate directly to the workplace. Now add another concern: making deals to conduct research for private industry. University leaders say working with businesses is a sign that higher education is reaching out to the world, allowing their scientists to work on real-time problems while providing much-needed funding for university laboratories. 'It adds to the diversity of our funding,' said Katherine Rojo del Busto, executive associate vice president in Texas A&M University's division of research and graduate studies. 'It helps build relationships with industry so we can understand the things that make us competitive.' But a recent report from a Washington, D.C.-based think tank questioned the relationship, citing contracts between the nation's major oil companies and 13 universities, including A&M, similar to earlier concerns about pharmaceutical companies paying for drug research. 'There's a risk that you undermine (the university's) credibility,' said Kate Gordon, vice president of energy policy at the Center for American Progress, which commissioned the report. 'There's also a risk that the research itself is tainted.' The report, Big Oil Goes to College, found no evidence of corporate interference with the research results. But investigator Jennifer Washburn said most of the deals gave the oil companies control over which projects to pursue - a practice academics say is standard with contracted research - and, in some cases, required researchers to delay publishing their results. The $5.2 million contract between A&M and Chevron Corp., which involves developing biofuels from nonfood crops, gave Chevron exclusive commercial licensing rights in addition to what Washburn described as 'strong influence over this entire academic research partnership.' Most academic research is funded by federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, and corporate money - targeted for research in energy, health, agriculture and other fields - is a fraction of the total. But it is growing. 'As government funds dry up, it's a smart thing to do,' said Corbin Robertson Jr., CEO and chairman of GP Natural Resource Partners and a member of the energy advisory board at the University of Houston. When corporate money used as matching funds for other grants is included, corporations have a stake in as much as 25 percent of all university research, according to Washburn. Stuart Long, interim vice president for research and technology transfer at UH, pegged corporate-funded research there at about 7 percent of total research funding. Some of the growth came after companies dropped their own research operations and instead asked universities to handle the work, Long said. But David Leebron, president of Rice University, noted that closer connections with industry aren't just about money. Higher education is more engaged with the world than it was in past decades, he said, and much corporate funding is used for more general concerns, including scholarships or broad-based research efforts. In addition, Leebron said, industry can present issues that academic scientists and researchers are uniquely suited to tackle. 'It's not just that they bring money,' he said. 'They bring problems that need to be solved.' Beyond that, industry and higher education have begun to talk about how to train future workers. Robertson said members of the UH energy advisory board recently pushed the need to ingrain safety as part of academic programs related to the energy industry. 'There's a lot of academic focus on how to drill wells, how to do reservoir engineering,' he said. 'Having academia focused on safety is something that, as an industry participant, I can appreciate.' Rice, the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University all were cited in Washburn's 210-page report, which reviewed 10 contractual agreements dealing with alternative energy research projects among 13 universities, two federal research labs and oil companies including Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil. The contracts totaled $883 million over 10 years. In general, Washburn criticized the contracts for giving corporate interests too much authority over the research; none of the contracts dealt with financial conflicts of interest involving members of the research selection committees or governing boards. Rojo del Busto said she isn't familiar with all the details of the contract between A&M and Chevron and hadn't read Washburn's report. But in general, she said, 'there's going to be give and take in dealing with industry. Neither side is going to walk away happy.' Gordon, the Center for American Progress executive, said she doesn't fault energy companies for funding research into alternative energies, the subject of the contracts reviewed for the report. 'It's what they can potentially make a profit off of,' she said. But she said relying more on private enterprise carries the risk that discoveries without the potential for profit won't be made. 'The lack of public funding means the only funding is from companies that have a stake (in the results),' she said. 'Publicly funded research doesn't have a profit motive.' Long said he hasn't heard those concerns and suggested that the growing relationship between academia and industry is a smart move. 'If we can provide the basic research that the industry needs, and their sponsorship of that research aids us in our educational work, by supporting grad students or building labs, that's a great thing for both of us,' he said. jeannie.kever@chron.com XXX - End of Story3D 