tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/university-of-california-2435/articlesUniversity of California – The Conversation2023-01-25T13:24:02Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1976582023-01-25T13:24:02Z2023-01-25T13:24:02ZThe SAT and ACT are less important than you might think<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505209/original/file-20230118-11-d766pp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=54%2C0%2C6019%2C4000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Whether on paper or computerized, standardized tests may be in decline.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/young-multi-ethnic-female-students-writing-exam-royalty-free-image/1171004870">Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>College admission tests are becoming a thing of the past.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2022/01/24/will-test-optional-become-new-normal-admissions">More than 80%</a> of U.S. colleges and universities do not require applicants to take standardized tests – <a href="https://fairtest.org/test-optional-list/">like the SAT or the ACT</a>. That proportion of institutions with test-optional policies <a href="https://www.urban.org/research/publication/how-test-optional-college-admissions-expanded-during-covid-19-pandemic">has more than doubled since the spring of 2020</a>.</p>
<p>And for the fall of 2023, <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2022/11/15/use-test-optional-and-test-free-admissions-keeps-rising">some 85 institutions</a> won’t even consider standardized test scores when reviewing applications. That includes the entire University of California system. </p>
<p>Currently, <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2022/11/21/early-admissions-numbers-are-good">only 4% of colleges that use the Common Application system</a> require a standardized test such as the SAT or the ACT for admission. </p>
<p>Even before the pandemic, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/has-pandemic-put-end-to-sat-act-180978167/">more than 1,000 colleges and universities</a> had either test-optional or so-called “test-blind” policies. But as the pandemic unfolded, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/has-pandemic-put-end-to-sat-act-180978167/">more than 600 additional institutions</a> followed suit. </p>
<p>At the time, many college officials noted that <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2020/09/14/pandemic-has-seen-rise-test-blind-admissions">health concerns</a> and other logistics associated with test-taking made them want to reduce student stress and risk. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/us/SAT-scores-uc-university-of-california.html">Concerns about racial equity</a> also factored into many decisions.</p>
<p>Other institutions are what some call “<a href="https://scholarship.shu.edu/dissertations/2823/">test-flexible</a>,” allowing applicants to submit test scores from Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams in place of the SAT or ACT.</p>
<h2>Tests under fire</h2>
<p>For many years, advocates and scholars have fought against the use of standardized tests, in general, and for college admission.</p>
<p>One critique is simple: Standardized tests aren’t that useful at measuring a student’s potential. <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X20902110">Research has repeatedly shown</a> that a student’s high school GPA is a better predictor of college success than standardized test scores such as the SAT or ACT. </p>
<p>But there are deeper issues too, involving race and equity. </p>
<p>The development and use of standardized tests in higher education <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-sats-new-adversity-score-is-a-poor-fix-for-a-problematic-test-117363">came out of the eugenics movement</a>. That movement claimed – and then used misleading and manufactured evidence to support the idea – that people of different races had different innate abilities.</p>
<p>“Standardized tests have become the <a href="https://www.bosedequity.org/blog/read-ibram-x-kendis-testimony-in-support-of-the-working-group-recommendation-to-suspendthetest">most effective racist weapon</a> ever devised to objectively degrade Black and Brown minds and legally exclude their bodies from prestigious schools,” according to Ibram X. Kendi, director of the Center for Anti-Racist Research at Boston University. </p>
<p>Kendi is not alone in highlighting the historic links between standardized tests and discrimination. Joseph A. Soares, editor of “The Scandal of Standardized Tests: Why We Need to Drop the SAT and ACT,” has documented “<a href="https://www.tcpress.com/blog/dismantling-white-supremacy-includes-racist-tests-sat-act/">[t]he original ugly eugenic racist intention behind the SAT</a>, aimed at excluding Jews from the Ivy League.” He says that goal has now “been realized by biased test-question selection algorithms that systemically discriminate against Blacks.” In his work, Soares draws attention to the practice of evaluating pilot questions and removing from the final test version questions on which Black students did better than white students. </p>
<p>My colleague Joshua Goodman has found that Black and Latino students who take the SAT or the ACT are less likely than white or Asian students to take it a second time. They perform less well, which <a href="https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.20170503">contributes to disproportionately low representation</a> of college students from low-income and racial minority backgrounds.</p>
<p>Those factors – as well as a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/us/SAT-scores-uc-university-of-california.html">lawsuit arguing discrimination</a> based on test performance – were behind the May 2020 decision by the University of California’s Board of Regents to <a href="https://www.tcpress.com/blog/dismantling-white-supremacy-includes-racist-tests-sat-act/">discontinue using SAT and ACT scores</a> in admissions decisions. </p>
<h2>Economics of higher education</h2>
<p>Colleges and universities tend to seek applicants with good grades and other achievements. They are often seeking a diverse pool from which to build their classes. Colleges that did not require standardized tests in applications for students arriving in fall 2021 “generally received more applicants, better academically qualified applicants, and <a href="https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/586321-harvard-ditching-standardized-testing-requirements-for/">more diverse pools of applicants</a>.” That’s according to Bob Schaeffer, executive director of FairTest, an advocacy group working to “end the misuses and flaws of testing practices” in higher education and in the K-12 sector.</p>
<p>In addition, birth rates are declining, and the number of 18-year-olds <a href="https://hechingerreport.org/college-students-predicted-to-fall-by-more-than-15-after-the-year-2025/">seeking to enter college is decreasing</a>. Many institutions are seeking to <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2022/07/18/direct-admissions-takes-individual-colleges">make it easier for people to apply to college</a>. </p>
<p>As a result of these factors, I expect to see high school students begin to choose where to apply based at least in part on whether colleges require standardized tests, consider them or ignore them entirely. According to <a href="https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/top-colleges-that-still-require-test-scores">U.S. News & World Report</a>, most of the colleges in the U.S. that still require test scores are located in Southern states, with the highest count in the state of Florida.</p>
<h2>The testing business</h2>
<p>The test-taking business, including preparatory classes, tutoring and the costs of taking the tests themselves, is a <a href="https://marker.medium.com/a-slippery-slope-for-big-test-cf3f6f64e28b">multibillion-dollar industry</a>.</p>
<p>As more institutions reduce their attention to tests, all those businesses feel pressure to reinvent themselves and make their services useful. The College Board, which produces the SAT and other tests, has recently tried to make its flagship test more “<a href="https://newsroom.collegeboard.org/digital-sat-brings-student-friendly-changes-test-experience">student-friendly</a>,” as the organization put it. In January 2022 it released an online SAT that is supposed to be easier for test sites to administer and easier for students to take.</p>
<p>In recent conversations <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pI7szcYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">I</a> have had in research into higher education policies, admission directors at selective universities tell me that standardized test scores have become an optional component of a portfolio of activities, awards and other material, that applicants have at their disposal when completing their college applications.</p>
<p>Institutions that have gone test-blind have already decided that the SAT is no longer part of the equation. Others may join them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197658/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary L. Churchill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An increasing number of colleges aren’t interested in seeing applicants’ standardized test results.Mary L. Churchill, Associate Dean, Strategic Partnerships and Community Engagement and Professor of the Practice, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1925662022-11-10T13:43:13Z2022-11-10T13:43:13ZRenaming California’s Hastings law school sparks $1.7 billion legal fight that shows how hard it is to ditch donors’ names<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493869/original/file-20221107-3558-q5cxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=148%2C197%2C2847%2C1477&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The state has signed off on rebranding the San Francisco law school.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/SanFranciscoLawSchoolNameChange/b8e8e2c4c0a24cb2b33cc4432f2bf53d/photo?Query=Serranus%20Clinton%20Hastings&mediaType=photo,video,graphic,audio&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1&currentItemNo=0">AP Photo/Eric Risberg</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Six descendants of Serranus Clinton Hastings, California’s first chief justice, and a group that says it represents alumni are <a href="https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23118489/lawsuit-against-new-name_20221003_63_complaint_signed_final.pdf">suing the state of California</a> over its decision to rename a nearly 150-year-old law school. The University of California, Hastings College of the Law, will become <a href="https://www.uchastings.edu/new-name">UC College of the Law, San Francisco</a>, in 2023, <a href="https://trackbill.com/bill/california-assembly-bill-1936-university-of-california-hastings-college-of-the-law/2224300/">in accordance with a law</a> state legislators passed and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed on Sept. 23, 2022.</em></p>
<p><em>The lawsuit also targets David Faigman, the school’s dean and chancellor, along with all of its trustees – who voted for this change after learning about Serranus Hastings’ role in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/27/us/hastings-college-law-native-massacre.html">slaughter of Native Americans</a> in the mid-19th century. Rebranding is one way that the school is actively seeking <a href="https://www.uchastings.edu/2021/04/23/the-yuki-people-and-the-legacy-of-serranus-hastings/">reconciliation with the Yuki people</a>, whose communities were harmed at that time. It filed a motion to dismiss the suit <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/uc-hastings-law-files-motion-to-dismiss-lawsuit-brought-by-hastings-college-conservation-committee-301666979.html">on Nov. 2, 2022</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>The lawsuit cites an <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=EDC&division=9.&title=3.&part=57.&chapter=3.&article=1.">1878 agreement</a> with the state of California to create and fund the law school, which promised Hastings’ heirs US$100,000, plus interest, should the school ever “cease to exist.” One hundred forty-four years later, that would <a href="https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2022/10/hastings-descendants-dispute-law-school-name-is-racist-they-want-the-name-kept-or-17-billion-payout.html">amount to $1.7 billion</a>, the San Francisco Chronicle has reported. The lawsuit also disputes the evidence about Hastings’ ties to the slaughter of Indigenous people and says this change would waste tax dollars.</em> </p>
<p><em>The Conversation U.S. asked <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HQJcRy4AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">nonprofit law scholar</a> <a href="https://works.bepress.com/terri_helge/">Terri Lynn Helge</a> to explain why it’s so hard to <a href="https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/business/article/Drug-money-No-one-lining-up-to-return-Sackler-13580979.php">sever prior arrangements</a> with <a href="https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2010/03/21/when-a-donor-becomes-tainted/">donors </a> – even when more than a century has elapsed.</em></p>
<h2>What usually happens when charities face pressure to distance themselves from past donors?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/what-would-you-do-with-harvey-weinsteins-tainted-charitable-donations-2017-10-10">Charities face a dilemma</a> when donors become an embarrassment. They need to decide whether to keep the money given by the now-tarnished donor or return the tainted funds.</p>
<p>But returning that money just because the donor’s reputation is now sullied may get the charity receiving the funds into trouble with <a href="https://www.naag.org/issues/charities/charities-regulation-101/">state regulators</a>. Further, the charity <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/arts/sackler-family-museums.html">may not simply rebrand</a> the program, building or fund bearing the donor’s name when that philanthropist becomes controversial.</p>
<p>These complications are one reason some charities opt to maintain a donor’s name after high-profile falls from grace. Almost 10 years after the <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/updates/enron-scandal-summary/">Enron scandal</a> broke, for example, the <a href="https://munews.missouri.edu/news-releases/2008/0421-Ken-lay-chair.php">University of Missouri at Columbia appointed</a> its first <a href="https://economics.missouri.edu/people/haslag">Kenneth Lay chair in economics</a>. The professorship was named for the late <a href="https://theconversation.com/corporate-directors-dont-see-stopping-wayward-ceos-as-their-job-contrary-to-popular-belief-165788">founder of Enron</a>, a company that imploded amid a massive accounting fraud scandal. The source of the funding for that professorship was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2002/05/12/endowed-enron/0083c0a3-2d20-46cf-85cf-41a5821548be/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.50088493ef76">$1.2 million of Enron stock</a> Lay had donated in 1999, two years before the company’s demise. Despite <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/16/business/enron-s-collapse-overview-arthur-andersen-fires-executive-for-enron-orders.html">Enron’s collapse</a>, which led to the dissolution of the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Business/Decade/arthur-andersen-business/story?id=9279255">Arthur Andersen LLP</a> accounting giant, the University of Missouri declined to terminate this professorship – <a href="https://economics.missouri.edu/people/haslag">which still endures</a>. </p>
<p>Likewise, <a href="https://maps.northwestern.edu/txt/facility/127">Northwestern University</a> still maintains <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2003-10-14/news/0310140304_1_million-in-enron-stock-kenneth-l-lay-executive-of-enron-corp">a building named after Arthur Andersen</a>, founder of the accounting firm and onetime faculty member, in its graduate business school. </p>
<p>But times have changed. And many universities and other charitable organizations now look for ways to distance themselves from controversy, sometimes at great cost.</p>
<h2>Do donors or their heirs ever give permission for this kind of rebranding?</h2>
<p>Yes, but it usually involves a lengthy negotiation process.</p>
<p>An example is the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s decision to drop the Sackler family’s name from multiple exhibits. Following a four-year campaign by activists outraged by the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/17/health/drug-overdose-deaths-record-high/index.html">Sackler family’s role in the opioid crisis</a>, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced in December 2021 that it would strip any mention of the Sackler name from “<a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/press/news/2021/the-met-and-sackler-families-announce-removal-of-the-family-name-in-dedicated-galleries">seven named exhibition spaces</a>.”</p>
<p>In a statement, the museum said it was taking this step after reaching an agreement with <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/12/09/1062752439/the-met-will-strip-the-sackler-familys-name">descendants of Mortimer and Raymond Sackler</a>, two brothers who made a fortune through sales of OxyContin – a prescription drug at the center of the opioid crisis.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493910/original/file-20221107-15-n8r1re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A sign reads 'The Sackler Wing' in a museum gallery exhibiting antiquities." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493910/original/file-20221107-15-n8r1re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493910/original/file-20221107-15-n8r1re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493910/original/file-20221107-15-n8r1re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493910/original/file-20221107-15-n8r1re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493910/original/file-20221107-15-n8r1re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493910/original/file-20221107-15-n8r1re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493910/original/file-20221107-15-n8r1re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Metropolitan Museum of Art reached an agreement with Sackler family members in 2021 to strip their name from seven exhibits because of its role in the opioid crisis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/GlobalOpioidsItalyPainLeague/8c3919f5cdf246f5a1e4c36136276342/photo?Query=sackler%20metropolitan&mediaType=photo,video,graphic,audio&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=19&currentItemNo=8">AP Photo/Seth Wenig</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Are there other ways to avoid being sued for taking down a donor’s name?</h2>
<p>Yes. A charity can ask a court to grant permission to override restrictions on naming rights in legally binding agreements in a special kind of legal proceeding. Under what’s known as the “<a href="https://charitylawyerblog.com/2013/01/09/cy-pres-doctrine/">cy pres</a>” doctrine, courts have this power if the charity can show that restrictions in those agreements have become impossible to uphold.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.pgdc.com/pgdc/unraveling-donor-intent-lawsuits-and-lessons">Charities that lose in court</a> may end up paying significant sums to rebrand. An example is <a href="https://www.pgdc.com/pgdc/vanderbilt-university-pays-12-million-donor-order-rename-confederate-memorial-hall">Vanderbilt University’s</a> 2002 attempt to rename Confederate Memorial Hall, a building the school had acquired following a merger with George Peabody College for Teachers in 1979.</p>
<p>Peabody had received a donation of $50,000 from the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1933 to fund its construction, with the condition that the building carry the moniker in perpetuity. After Vanderbilt publicly announced that it would remove that tribute to the Confederacy from the building’s name and walls, the organization sued to enforce the terms of its gift agreement.</p>
<p>A trial court initially approved Vanderbilt’s cy pres request to rename the building. An appeals court overturned that decision and ordered the university to <a href="https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2016/08/15/vanderbilt-will-remove-confederate-inscription-from-residence-hall/">reimburse the United Daughters of the Confederacy</a> the value of its original donation, adjusted for inflation, in exchange for the right to rename the building.</p>
<p>A decade later, <a href="https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2016/08/15/chancellor-memorial/">anonymous donors gave Vanderbilt the $1.2 million</a> it took to get rid of what Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos called “a symbol of exclusion, and a divisive contradiction of our hopes and dreams of being a truly great and inclusive university.”</p>
<p>If Hastings’ descendants prevail with their lawsuit, the damages paid might be more than 1,000 times the amount Vanderbilt ultimately paid to rename Confederate Memorial Hall. </p>
<h2>How can charities avoid getting ensnared like this in the future?</h2>
<p>The complications that can arise from tainted donors are an incentive for charities to require “<a href="https://www.floridabar.org/news/tfb-journal/?durl=/DIVCOM/JN/jnjournal01.nsf/Articles/7EFCA4DEE4066FE285257F020079350B">morals provisions</a>” in naming rights agreements. These provisions let charities remove donors’ names from buildings, endowed fellowships or scholarships or return donated funds in the future, following allegations of or convictions for immoral or illegal behavior by donors.</p>
<p>But activating those provisions can be <a href="https://www.wealthmanagement.com/high-net-worth/nine-steps-negotiate-charitable-naming-rights">challenging, because it is hard to clearly define</a> what constitutes morally repugnant behavior and who gets to decide when that has occurred. </p>
<p>Alternatively, charities can set expiration dates in all their naming-rights agreements that allow the removal of a donor’s name after a specified period of time. The Louvre, a French museum, restricts naming rights to a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jul/17/louvre-removes-sackler-name-from-museum-wing-amid-protests">maximum of 20 years</a>. That allowed it to <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20190721-sackler-name-removed-louvre-opioid-crisis-france">quickly remove the Sackler name</a> from spaces bearing the family moniker because of the family’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-opioid-crisis-isnt-just-the-sacklers-fault-and-making-purdue-pharma-pay-isnt-enough-on-its-own-to-fix-the-pharmaceutical-industrys-deeper-problems-178710">role in the opioid crisis</a>.</p>
<p>Otherwise, universities, museums and other charities must choose among a few bad options.</p>
<p><em>Some passages in this article originally appeared in an article published on <a href="https://theconversation.com/fending-off-new-sackler-money-is-easier-for-museums-and-schools-than-returning-old-gifts-114242">March 28, 2019</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Vanderbilt University financially supports The Conversation U.S.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192566/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Terri Lynn Helge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Universities, museums and other charities that find themselves saddled with names that have become sullied must choose among a few bad options.Terri Lynn Helge, Professor of Law, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1361502020-04-29T12:09:29Z2020-04-29T12:09:29ZScientist at work: Trapping urban coyotes to see if they can be ‘hazed’ away from human neighborhoods<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330436/original/file-20200424-163058-14pbtk6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C12%2C4031%2C2999&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A sedated coyote about to be released with a tracking collar in greater Los Angeles.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Niamh Quinn</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After weeks of sleepless nights spent scrutinizing grainy images relayed from our remote cameras, mostly of waving grass and tumbling leaves, finally, there it is. A live coyote with a loop around it’s neck. On October 8, 2019, my colleagues and I caught the first member of the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources pack, #19CU001.</p>
<p>We captured, collared and released this coyote to help answer an important question; is <a href="https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/coyote-hazing">community hazing</a> an appropriate management method for urban coyotes in Los Angeles County? Hazing is pretty much what it sounds like – shouting, arm waving and noise-making directed at urban coyotes in hopes of getting them to significantly change their behavior and avoid urban-residential areas. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330438/original/file-20200424-163067-10fdkme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330438/original/file-20200424-163067-10fdkme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330438/original/file-20200424-163067-10fdkme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330438/original/file-20200424-163067-10fdkme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330438/original/file-20200424-163067-10fdkme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330438/original/file-20200424-163067-10fdkme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330438/original/file-20200424-163067-10fdkme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330438/original/file-20200424-163067-10fdkme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A coyote crosses a street in the densely populated Westlake neighborhood, west of downtown Los Angeles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/C-144_crossing_street_%2819896711640%29.jpg">National Park Service</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Coyotes attack and often eat domestic animals, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/urban-coyotes-eat-lot-garbageand-cats-180974461/">especially cats</a>. In a 2019 study, cats were found in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228881">19.8% of coyote scat</a>. Coyotes also occasionally bite humans, especially in Southern California. In the first few months of 2020, five people have been bitten in Los Angeles and Orange counties alone. Hazing is being <a href="https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/coyote-hazing">touted as the answer</a> to coyote management across many urban areas in the United States. </p>
<p>But there is little scientific evidence to support hazing as an effective management tool. In fact, so far, the method has failed to work in other wildlife situations including those with <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3873205">bears</a> and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4641110">birds</a>. Wildlife managers are eager for science-based solutions, which is why, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=POa4sLkAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">as biologists</a>, my colleagues and I decided to study hazing.</p>
<h2>First, catch 20 coyotes</h2>
<p>We designed an experiment that calls for the capture, GPS collaring and release of 20 coyotes east of the 110 Freeway in Los Angeles. Initially, we will measure how the coyotes use open space and the urban environment. Then, we plan to haze 10 of them and remeasure how they use space.</p>
<p>The other 10 will serve as a control group. After 18 months, the un-hazed coyotes will switch to a hazing treatment and the 10 already-hazed coyotes will have their collars dropped remotely and we will set about capturing another 10 to replace them.</p>
<p>I work with the LA County’s Department of Agriculture to identify trapping sites, which is one of the trickiest parts of catching coyotes. We first look for areas that have had recent or historic coyotes sightings, examining the subtle signs left on the ground, like paw prints and scat. We also are careful to make sure no people or dogs are nearby.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330873/original/file-20200427-145525-jwd8xv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330873/original/file-20200427-145525-jwd8xv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330873/original/file-20200427-145525-jwd8xv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330873/original/file-20200427-145525-jwd8xv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330873/original/file-20200427-145525-jwd8xv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330873/original/file-20200427-145525-jwd8xv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330873/original/file-20200427-145525-jwd8xv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330873/original/file-20200427-145525-jwd8xv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When triggered, this device throws a secure, non-choking cable loop over the coyote’s head.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Niamh Quinn</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Once we have confirmed the presence of coyotes, two skilled trappers from the county <a href="https://www.wildlifecontrolsupplies.com/removal/Collarum.html">set a Colloraum trap</a> – which is a humane canine capture device. It requires the animal to bite down on a lever to engage a cable that traps the animal by the neck. You can’t legally bait traps in California, so the lever looks like a fluffy mammal. We have it set to a hair trigger. Game cameras surround the trap and send images to an app on my phone that lets me monitor what is happening at night, when coyotes are most active. </p>
<h2>Catching ‘Lazy Legs’</h2>
<p>The night I see we’ve finally caught our first coyote, it’s all go! I call my team, greeted by sleepy hellos from my county partners, our wonderful veterinarian and my staff. We have to rally quickly because it is important to get the animal out of the trap and processed in as short a time as possible.</p>
<p>When I arrive at the site, I can already see the coyote’s yellow eyes reflecting light from my car’s headlights. The excitement is hard to express. It certainly makes up for the hours and hours of watching leaves and grass sway in the breeze. </p>
<p>Our veterinarian from Western University of Health Sciences, prepares the animal for sedation. We restrain and muzzle the coyote, just in case he wakes up. We prepare the collar and weigh him. He’s a good size, 29 lbs. (13 kg). We check his teeth to try to estimate his age. He’s definitely not a juvenile, but is probably less than 3 years old. I secure the collar in place around his neck.</p>
<p>Then it’s time to administer the sedative reversal. We “reverse” him in a crate to ensure we don’t release a drugged coyote that could wander in front of a car. </p>
<p>When we swing the door open, he bolts and is out of sight in a flash. Just like that, 19CU001 is out on the wind collecting data for our project. Based on the data coming from his collar, this individual appears to have a home range of less than half a square mile, which is why we nicknamed him “Lazy Legs.” Hopefully, he will be easy to find and haze, when the time comes.</p>
<p>Currently, we have caught five out of the 20 coyotes we need for our study, but the current coronavirus health restrictions have suspended our work for the time being.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330458/original/file-20200424-163088-169smn7.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330458/original/file-20200424-163088-169smn7.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330458/original/file-20200424-163088-169smn7.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330458/original/file-20200424-163088-169smn7.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330458/original/file-20200424-163088-169smn7.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330458/original/file-20200424-163088-169smn7.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330458/original/file-20200424-163088-169smn7.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330458/original/file-20200424-163088-169smn7.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Yellow and blue flags represent locations from March 2020 of two male coyotes in Laverne, Calif.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Niamh Quinn</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So far, <a href="https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=9f6b8f71dc104ddfad9264331d98bceb&extent=-117.9815,33.9519,-117.93,33.9795">the data</a> we’ve collected shows individual animals have home ranges that vary widely in size, from less than half a square mile up to seven square miles. We also have observed they spend considerable amounts of time in the urban environment, probably looking for food.</p>
<p>The data will help us pinpoint exactly where, when and in what types of habitat coyotes live in Eastern Los Angeles and will also give us a baseline for when we begin to test hazing.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136150/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Niamh M. Quinn receives funding from Los Angeles County's Productivity Investment Fund. </span></em></p>Biologists capture and collar coyotes in urban Los Angeles in order to study the effectiveness of ‘hazing’ as a wildlife management tool.Niamh M. Quinn, Human-Wildlife Interactions Advisor, University of California, Division of Agriculture and Natural ResourcesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1203232019-07-15T12:03:16Z2019-07-15T12:03:16ZUniversity of California’s showdown with the biggest academic publisher aims to change scholarly publishing for good<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283903/original/file-20190712-173338-1gov2o5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=311%2C0%2C4985%2C3581&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">For now, it's going to be trickier for the University of California community to access some academic journals.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/michelle658/6022758297">Michelle/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>This month, academic publisher Elsevier <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/07/11/elsevier-ends-journal-access-uc-system">shuttered</a> the University of California’s online access to current journal articles. It’s the latest move in the high stakes <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-uc-elsevier-20190711-story.html">standoff</a> between Elsevier, the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-uc-elsevier-20181207-story.html">world’s largest publisher of scholarly research</a>, and the University of California, whose scholars <a href="https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2018/chapters/chapter-9.html">produce about 10%</a> of the nation’s research publications.</p>
<p>Last February, Elsevier chose to continue providing access to journals via its <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com">ScienceDirect</a> online platform after UC’s <a href="https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-terminates-subscriptions-worlds-largest-scientific-publisher-push-open-access-publicly">subscription expired</a> and negotiations broke down. With its instant access now cut off, the UC research community will learn firsthand what it’s like to rely on the open web and other means of accessing critical research.</p>
<p>The UC-Elsevier showdown made headlines because it’s symptomatic of the way the internet has failed to deliver on the promise to make knowledge easily accessible and shareable by anyone, anywhere in the world. It’s the latest in a succession of cracks in what is widely considered to be a <a href="https://www.researchinformation.info/news/new-report-warns-%E2%80%98failing-system%E2%80%99-scholarly-publishing">failing system</a> for sharing academic research. <a href="https://leadership.ucdavis.edu/people/mackenzie-smith">As the head of the research library at UC Davis</a>, I see this development as a <a href="https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/publisher-negotiations/uc-and-elsevier-impact/">harbinger of a tectonic shift</a> in how universities and their faculty share research, build reputations and preserve knowledge in the digital age.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Accessing a journal no longer means going to a periodicals room.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/13873472463/in/faves-52792775@N00/">Newton W. Elwell/Boston Public Library/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Moving from stacks to screens</h2>
<p>Here’s how things traditionally worked.</p>
<p>Universities have always subscribed to scientific journals so their researchers can study and build on the work that came before, and won’t needlessly duplicate research they never knew about. In the print age, university library shelves were lined with journals, available for any researcher or – in the case of public universities like the University of California – any member of the public to peruse and learn from.</p>
<p>Now, for almost all journals, and a growing number of books, libraries sign contracts to license access to digital versions. Since academic publishers moved their journals online, it has become rare for libraries to subscribe to printed journals, and researchers have adapted to the convenience of accessing journal articles on the internet.</p>
<p>Under the new business model of licensing access to journals online rather than distributing them in print, for-profit publishers often lock libraries into bundled subscriptions that wrap the majority of a publisher’s portfolio of journals – <a href="https://www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals">almost 3,000 in Elsevier’s case</a> – into a single, multimillion dollar package. Rather than storing back issues on shelves, libraries can lose permanent access to journals when a contract expires. And members of the public can no longer read the library’s copy of a journal because the licenses are limited to members of the university. Now the public must buy online copies of academic articles for an average of US$35 to $40 a pop. </p>
<p>The shift to digital has been good for researchers in many ways. It is far more convenient to search for articles online, and easier to access and download a copy – provided you work for an institution with a paid subscription. Modern software makes organizing and annotating them simpler, too. With all of these benefits, no one would advocate for going back to the old days of print journals. </p>
<p>Online access to journals did not improve the picture overall. Despite digital copies of articles costing nothing to duplicate and the cost of producing an article online being lower than in the past, the cost to libraries of licensing access to them has continued to experience <a href="https://www.arl.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/5yr_ongoing-resource-expenditures_by_type.pdf">hyperinflation</a>. <a href="https://theconversation.com/academic-journal-publishing-is-headed-for-a-day-of-reckoning-80869">No library</a> can afford to license all the journals its faculty and students want access to, and many researchers around the world are shut out completely. Compounding the problem, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502">consolidation in the scholarly publishing market</a> has reduced competition significantly, causing even more price inflexibility.</p>
<h2>Excessive profits?</h2>
<p>Academic publishers certainly bear costs. They pay for professional editors and programmers, they manage the peer review process, they market their journals and so on. However, their revenues far exceed these costs and are among the highest of any companies in the world. Elsevier’s profit margin is reported to be <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kittyknowles/2018/06/13/blockchain-science-iris-ai-project-aiur-elsevier-academic-journal-london-tech-week-cogx/">nearly 40%</a>, far higher than even Apple at <a href="https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/profit-margins">around 23%</a>.</p>
<p>Where social media platforms like Facebook profit from – and indeed, would not exist without – the content generated by users, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/04/the-guardian-view-on-academic-publishing-disastrous-capitalism">the parallel is true</a> for academic journals. Companies like Elsevier receive articles from university faculty and other researchers for free, summarizing research that was often publicly funded by government grants. Then other faculty and researchers serve on their editorial boards and peer-review those articles for free or a nominal fee. Finally the company publishes them in journals available only behind a paywall.</p>
<p>And there’s the rub: the paywall. The great promise of the internet was that it would make <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free">knowledge more freely and easily accessible</a>. In the world of academic research – where new discoveries are made and new knowledge is born – the hope 20 years ago was that the advent of online platforms would make research articles universally available. It would also bring down the cost of publishing scholarly journals and, consequently, begin to reduce the multimillion dollar subscription costs borne by universities and other research institutions.</p>
<p>Instead, articles are not readily available to everyone, subscription costs have continued to rise, and subscribers’ rights have eroded, including what they can do with articles they buy and their ability to provide long-term access to them.</p>
<p>What happened to sharing knowledge with the people who need it, funded or created it?</p>
<h2>A model for the digital age</h2>
<p>Maybe it’s time to just blow up the whole system and start over. But today’s scholarly system of sharing knowledge evolved over hundreds of years and contains certain qualities – peer review of accuracy, editorial judgment, long-term preservation – that still matter deeply.</p>
<p>While research products – books, journals and articles – would definitely benefit from modernization in the digital age, we at the University of California are focusing on fixing the business model first. Paywalls and online subscriptions may make sense in other parts of the media ecosystem, but it’s not a good model for academic publishing, where authors and reviewers are paid by universities and research grants (with public money) rather than by publishers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The open access movement would get rid of paywalls and let anyone read anything for free.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/set-ornate-gates-heaven-opening-under-158678495">Inked Pixels/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fortunately, the academy has another option for a publishing business model that can better achieve the promise of the internet: open access. In that model, authors, or their funders or institutions, pay the publisher a fee to cover the cost of publishing each article. In exchange, the articles are made freely available for everyone to read online, anywhere, anytime. Article quality is preserved by the same unpaid peer-review system. Libraries at research institutions could shift their payments from licenses and subscriptions to publication fees for their affiliated authors. The cost is theoretically the same, but everyone can read everything for free. </p>
<p>The University of California has long <a href="https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/open-access-policy/">supported the ideals of open access</a> – allowing everyone in the world to access the knowledge created by its faculty and researchers, for the benefit of all. In fact, since open access became an option for publishing, more and more UC authors, following the <a href="https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4375">global trend</a>, have independently chosen to pay their publisher a fee in order to make their article freely available to the public.</p>
<p>But those fees come on top of the <a href="https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/why-uc-split-publishing-giant-elsevier">tens of millions of dollars</a> that the university is already paying the publisher for access to the same articles. This “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-science-of-the-tax-dollar-double-dip-1459379449">double dipping</a>” by publishers was the final straw in UC’s resolve to change the system.</p>
<p>Several years ago, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=_Sp-B_0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">I worked</a> with colleagues within the University of California and other academic research institutions to study the <a href="https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/icis/uc-pay-it-forward-project/">costs of publishing with this open access model</a>. We found that, while costs would shift and more research-grant funds may need to be applied to publishing fees, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.5703/1288284316481">overall it would be affordable</a> for research universities, at least in North America where libraries are relatively well funded. With these results, UC could see a way out of its dilemma. </p>
<p>When UC’s contract with Elsevier was up for renewal, we resolved to put our ideas into practice and pursue the twin goals of increasing open access to UC’s research while containing or lowering our journal-related costs – and finally achieving something of the promise of the internet. While I was not on UC’s negotiating team, I was among the group of faculty and library leaders that worked closely with them and decided to take this step.</p>
<p>Now, UC’s researchers will have to find other ways to get Elsevier journal articles than the online access they have become accustomed to. Many of those articles are already <a href="https://www.the-scientist.com/daily-news/open-access-on-the-rise-study-31125">freely available</a> on the web and the rest can be borrowed from libraries or requested from authors. There are also a growing number of tools like <a href="https://unpaywall.org/">Unpaywall</a>, which searches the web for free copies of articles, to help researchers with that transition. But for busy researchers with little time to spare, convenience is king, and they’ll likely soon learn from experience why achieving 100% open access to research articles is so important.</p>
<p>UC’s goals are ambitious and their implementation will be complex. Changing a system this intricate is akin to modernizing the FAA’s air traffic control system – a million planes are in the air at any moment and altering anything can have serious consequences elsewhere. But we have to start somewhere or the whole system is at risk, and UC has placed its bet. We join an expanding <a href="https://oa2020.org/mission/#eois">global movement</a>, and we believe we’re now on the path to a better system for sharing knowledge in the 21st century.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an updated version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/university-of-californias-break-with-the-biggest-academic-publisher-could-shake-up-scholarly-publishing-for-good-112941">an article</a> originally published on March 7, 2019.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120323/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>MacKenzie Smith receives funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>The UC libraries let their Elsevier journal subscriptions lapse and now the publisher has cut their online access. It’s a painful milestone in the fight UC hopes may transform how journals get paid.MacKenzie Smith, University Librarian and Vice Provost for Digital Scholarship, University of California, DavisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1129412019-03-08T01:28:07Z2019-03-08T01:28:07ZUniversity of California’s break with the biggest academic publisher could shake up scholarly publishing for good<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262542/original/file-20190306-100784-oqhxay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=155%2C248%2C2355%2C1691&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Libraries subscribe digitally to academic journals – and are left with nothing in the stacks when the contract expires.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/maveric2003/137231015">Eric Chan/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The University of California recently made international headlines when it <a href="https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-terminates-subscriptions-worlds-largest-scientific-publisher-push-open-access-publicly">canceled its subscription</a> with scientific journal publisher <a href="https://www.elsevier.com/">Elsevier</a>. The twittersphere <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ucelsevier">lit up</a>. And Elsevier’s parent company, RELX, saw its stock <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-stocks/uk-main-index-bounces-back-on-wpp-strength-relx-tumbles-idUKKCN1QI42N">drop 7 percent</a> in response to the announcement.</p>
<p>A library canceling a subscription seems like a simple, everyday business decision, so what’s the big deal?</p>
<p>It was not just the clash-of-the-titans drama between the University of California, whose scholars <a href="https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2018/chapters/chapter-9.html">produce nearly 10 percent</a> of the nation’s research publications, and Elsevier, the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-uc-elsevier-20181207-story.html">world’s largest publisher</a> of academic research. </p>
<p>The story made headlines because it’s symptomatic of the way in which the internet has failed to deliver on the promise to make knowledge easily accessible and shareable by anyone, anywhere in the world. The UC-Elsevier showdown was the latest in a succession of cracks in what is widely considered to be a <a href="https://www.researchinformation.info/news/new-report-warns-%E2%80%98failing-system%E2%80%99-scholarly-publishing">failing system</a> for sharing academic research. <a href="https://leadership.ucdavis.edu/people/mackenzie-smith">As the head of the research library at UC Davis</a>, I see this development as a harbinger of a tectonic shift in how universities and their faculty share research, build reputations and preserve knowledge in the digital age.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Accessing a journal no longer means going to a periodicals room.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/13873472463/in/faves-52792775@N00/">Newton W. Elwell/Boston Public Library/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Moving from stacks to screens</h2>
<p>Here’s how things traditionally worked.</p>
<p>Universities have always subscribed to scientific journals so their researchers can study and build on the work that came before, and won’t needlessly duplicate research they never knew about. In the print age, university library shelves were lined with journals, available for any researcher or – in the case of public universities like the University of California – any member of the public to peruse and learn from.</p>
<p>Now, for almost all journals, and a growing number of books, libraries sign contracts to license access to digital versions. Since academic publishers moved their journals online, it has become rare for libraries to subscribe to printed journals, and researchers have adapted to the convenience of accessing journal articles on the internet.</p>
<p>Under the new business model of licensing access to journals online rather than distributing them in print, for-profit publishers often lock libraries into bundled subscriptions that wrap the majority of a publisher’s portfolio of journals – <a href="https://www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals">almost 3,000 in Elsevier’s case</a> – into a single, multi-million dollar package. Rather than storing back issues on shelves, libraries can lose permanent access to journals when a contract expires. And members of the public can no longer read the library’s copy of a journal because the licenses are limited to members of the university. Now the public must buy online copies of academic articles for an average of US$35 to $40 a pop. </p>
<p>The shift to digital has been good for researchers in many ways. It is far more convenient to search for articles online, and easier to access and download a copy – provided you work for an institution with a paid subscription. Modern software makes organizing and annotating them simpler, too. With all of these benefits, no one would advocate for going back to the old days of print journals. </p>
<p>But this online system did not improve the picture overall. Despite digital copies of articles costing nothing to duplicate and the cost of producing an article online being lower than in the past, the cost to libraries of licensing access to them has continued to experience <a href="https://www.arl.org/storage/documents/5yr_ongoing-resource-expenditures_by_type.pdf">hyperinflation</a>. <a href="https://theconversation.com/academic-journal-publishing-is-headed-for-a-day-of-reckoning-80869">No library</a> can afford to license all of the journals that its faculty and students want access to, and many researchers around the world are shut out completely. Compounding the problem, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502">consolidation in the scholarly publishing market</a> has reduced competition significantly, causing even more price inflexibility.</p>
<h2>Excessive profits?</h2>
<p>Academic publishers certainly bear costs. They pay for professional editors and programmers, they manage the peer review process, they market their journals and so on. However, their revenues far exceed these costs and are among the highest of any companies in the world. Elsevier’s profit margin is reported to be <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kittyknowles/2018/06/13/blockchain-science-iris-ai-project-aiur-elsevier-academic-journal-london-tech-week-cogx/">nearly 40 percent</a> far higher than even Apple at <a href="https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/profit-margins">around 23 percent</a>.</p>
<p>Where social media platforms like Facebook profit from – and indeed, would not exist without – the content generated by users, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/04/the-guardian-view-on-academic-publishing-disastrous-capitalism">the parallel is true</a> for academic journals. Companies like Elsevier receive articles from university faculty and other researchers for free, summarizing research that was often publicly funded by government grants. Then other faculty and researchers serve on their editorial boards and peer-review those articles for free or a nominal fee. Finally the company publishes them in journals available only behind a paywall.</p>
<p>And there’s the rub: the paywall. The great promise of the internet was that it would make <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free">knowledge more freely and easily accessible</a>. In the world of academic research – where new discoveries are made and new knowledge is born – the hope 20 years ago was that the advent of online platforms would make research articles universally available. It would also bring down the cost of publishing scholarly journals and, consequently, begin to reduce the multi-million dollar subscription costs borne by universities and other research institutions.</p>
<p>Instead, articles are not readily available to everyone, subscription costs have continued to rise, and subscribers’ rights have eroded, including what they can do with articles they buy and their ability to provide long-term access to them.</p>
<p>What happened to sharing knowledge with the people who need it, funded or created it?</p>
<h2>A model for the digital age</h2>
<p>Maybe it’s time to just blow up the whole system and start over. But the system of sharing knowledge that scholars have today evolved over hundreds of years and contains certain qualities – peer review of accuracy, editorial judgment, long-term preservation – that still matter deeply.</p>
<p>While research products – books, journals and articles – would definitely benefit from modernization in the digital age, we at the University of California are focusing on fixing the business model first. Paywalls and online subscriptions may make sense in other parts of the media ecosystem, but it’s not a good model for academic publishing, where authors and reviewers are paid by universities and research grants (with public money) rather than by publishers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The open access movement would get rid of paywalls and let anyone read anything for free.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/set-ornate-gates-heaven-opening-under-158678495">Inked Pixels/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fortunately, the academy has another option for a publishing business model that can better achieve the promise of the internet: open access. In that model, authors, or their funders or institutions, pay the publisher a fee to cover the cost of publishing each article. In exchange, the articles are made freely available for everyone to read online, anywhere, anytime. Article quality is preserved by the same unpaid peer-review system. Libraries at research institutions could shift their payments from licenses and subscriptions to publication fees for their affiliated authors. The cost is theoretically the same, but everyone can read everything for free. </p>
<p>The University of California has long <a href="https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/open-access-policy/">supported the ideals of open access</a> – allowing everyone in the world to access the knowledge created by its faculty and researchers, for the benefit of all. In fact, since open access became an option for publishing, more and more UC authors, following the <a href="https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4375">global trend</a>, have independently chosen to pay their publisher a fee in order to make their article freely available to the public.</p>
<p>But those fees come on top of the <a href="https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/why-uc-split-publishing-giant-elsevier">tens of millions of dollars</a> that the university is already paying the publisher for access to the same articles. This “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-science-of-the-tax-dollar-double-dip-1459379449">double dipping</a>” by publishers was the final straw in UC’s resolve to change the system.</p>
<p>Several years ago, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=_Sp-B_0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">I worked</a> with colleagues within the University of California and other academic research institutions to study the <a href="https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/icis/uc-pay-it-forward-project/">costs of publishing with this open access model</a>. We found that, while costs would shift and more research-grant funds may need to be applied to publishing fees, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.5703/1288284316481">overall it would be affordable</a> for research universities, at least in North America where libraries are relatively well funded. With these results, UC could see a way out of its dilemma. </p>
<p>When UC’s contract with Elsevier was up for renewal, we resolved to put our ideas into practice and pursue the twin goals of increasing open access to UC’s research while containing or lowering our journal-related costs – and finally achieving something of the promise of the internet. While I was not on UC’s negotiating team, I was among the group of faculty and library leaders that worked closely with them and decided to take this step.</p>
<p>Our goals are ambitious and their implementation will be complex. Changing a system this intricate is akin to modernizing the FAA’s air traffic control system – a million planes are in the air at any moment and changing anything can have serious consequences elsewhere. But we have to start somewhere or the whole system is at risk, and UC has placed its bet. We join a <a href="https://oa2020.org/mission/#eois">global movement</a> that began in Europe and is expanding around the world, and we believe we’re now on the path to a better system for sharing knowledge in the 21st century.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112941/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>MacKenzie Smith receives funding from Mellon Foundation, IMLS, NSF. </span></em></p>Digital publishing hasn’t resulted in the free and open access to information many envisioned. Universities are increasingly fed up with a system they see as charging them for their own scholars’ labor.MacKenzie Smith, University Librarian and Vice Provost for Digital Scholarship, University of California, DavisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/845572017-11-01T10:14:17Z2017-11-01T10:14:17ZCalifornia’s higher education: From American dream to dilemma<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190048/original/file-20171012-31431-5dey19.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students at Berkeley campus</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ben Margot, File</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For the Golden State of California, 1960 was a golden year: It was a time of rapid development, when the state chose to use its tax revenues to fund magnificent freeways and other infrastructure. </p>
<p>Part of this massive development was a system of <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/25157701">public higher education</a> – a model that put California center stage in the American imagination.</p>
<p>From my perspective as a social historian who started high school in Southern California in 1961 and then entered graduate school at the University of California Berkeley in 1969, the story of higher education in California over the past 60 years has been a fantastic voyage – albeit with detours and delays.</p>
<h2>Start of the dream</h2>
<p>California’s higher education prospects of 1960 were built on a distinctive historical foundation. The idea that the state’s colleges and universities could – and should – be the <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=339">source</a> of an informed, responsible citizenry and state leadership had been established by legislators and voters by World War I. </p>
<p>Robert Gordon Sproul, president of the University of California, who served from 1930 to 1958, built on this early vision. He set up <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=339">six campuses statewide</a> as part of a creation of a multi-campus system to meet California’s growing demand for higher education. </p>
<p>After World War II, as returning veterans headed back to school the demand continued to grow: <a href="http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/uchistory/archives_exhibits/masterplan/MasterPlan1960.pdf">Enrollments in universities increased by as much as 50 percent.</a> At the same time, the <a href="http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/uchistory/archives_exhibits/masterplan/MasterPlan1960.pdf">number of high school graduates</a> went up as well. The number of campuses needed to be further increased. </p>
<p>The rapid growth in potential students coinciding with the crazy quilt of a large number of public and private institutions led to <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=339">turf wars</a>. The foremost problem was a contentious rivalry between the University of California system and other state-funded higher education institutions. Both were <a href="http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19601017,00.html">in competition</a> for funding and students.</p>
<h2>The dream years</h2>
<p>When Clark Kerr was named president of the University of California system in 1958, he sought to end the chaos of the <a href="http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19601017,00.html">statewide academic “guerrilla warfare</a>.” Kerr was an economist who had served for seven years as chancellor of the university’s flagship campus at Berkeley.</p>
<p>With Kerr’s efforts higher education became part of the California dream. In 1960 the state legislature passed the Donahoe Act. This legislation included a 246-page report, <a href="http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/uchistory/archives_exhibits/masterplan/MasterPlan1960.pdf">“A Master Plan for Higher Education in California, 1960-1975.”</a></p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190050/original/file-20171012-31386-rqx9mv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190050/original/file-20171012-31386-rqx9mv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190050/original/file-20171012-31386-rqx9mv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190050/original/file-20171012-31386-rqx9mv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190050/original/file-20171012-31386-rqx9mv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1018&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190050/original/file-20171012-31386-rqx9mv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1018&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190050/original/file-20171012-31386-rqx9mv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1018&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Clark Kerr on the cover of Time magazine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/urbanoasis/3560475324/">Dale Winling</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To reduce chaos, missions were clearly defined for each institutional segment: University of California was to admit the top 12.5 percent of high school graduates, and the California State University and Colleges would draw from the top 33 percent of remaining high school graduates. The others could enroll in junior colleges, later renamed “community colleges.” These junior colleges provided associate degree programs, and their graduates could apply for transfer to the four-year colleges.</p>
<p>The plan gained national attention. On Oct. 17, 1960, Time magazine featured Clark Kerr on its cover as the <a href="http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19601017,00.html">“Master Planner.”</a> </p>
<p>A distinctive feature of the California master plan was that the state’s private colleges and universities (also known as “independent colleges and universities”) too were <a href="https://www.aiccu.edu/about/">included in this public policy</a>, the rationale being that distinguished private colleges and universities such as Stanford, University of Southern California, California Institute of Technology and Claremont Colleges were a unique resource to the state. Their alumni, as skilled professionals and leaders, contributed to the state’s development. These institutions were also major employers within their counties and communities.</p>
<h2>Affordable and a place of excellence</h2>
<p>What is particularly important to note is that the California dream of higher education combined access to higher education with affordability and choice. Until then, the City University of New York (CUNY) had been the only major public higher education system that had a tradition of not charging tuition. But the New York policy for its CUNY segment did not apply to New York’s other public institutions, such as the State University of New York (SUNY). </p>
<p>In contrast, the new California policy of no tuition was extended to all public colleges and universities statewide. Furthermore, the master plan promoted <a href="http://www.csac.ca.gov/doc.asp?id=128">state-funded student scholarships</a> through a state agency created in 1955, the California Student Aid Commission. </p>
<p>California came to provide a high quality of education – the best in the country. A 1966 report by the American Council on Education (based on data collected in 1964) shows that University of California, Berkeley was the <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED016621">top university at the time in America</a> for overall quality in graduate education. </p>
<p>Excellence was encouraged and nurtured. Between 1939 and 1968, 12 professors at UC Berkeley had received the Nobel Prize, the <a href="https://www.berkeley.edu/news/features/nobel/">highest number</a> at any university. </p>
<p>Resources were made available for the realization of the dream. As part of passing the Donahoe Act in 1960, the California state government <a href="http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19601017,00.html">approved US$1 billion</a> (equivalent to about $10 billion in 2017) in funding for higher education facilities. Central to its growth was an expansion of campuses. Between 1964 and 1965 the University of California <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/25157701">built three new campuses</a> – at San Diego, Irvine and Santa Cruz. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190049/original/file-20171012-31408-1fra4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190049/original/file-20171012-31408-1fra4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190049/original/file-20171012-31408-1fra4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190049/original/file-20171012-31408-1fra4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190049/original/file-20171012-31408-1fra4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190049/original/file-20171012-31408-1fra4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190049/original/file-20171012-31408-1fra4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">University of California, Irvine, 1966.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ocarchives/2868164141/">Orange County Archives</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Inflation, tuition, loans</h2>
<p>By 1967, however, the master plan was encountering problems – it was expensive and increasingly seemed not sustainable.</p>
<p>In addressing citizen groups, state Senator George Deukmejian voiced Republican concerns about higher education. According to a front-page story in The Whittier Daily News on October 14, 1967, Deukmejian argued in favor of adding a tuition charge for University of California students and endorsed <a href="http://www.newfoundations.com/Clabaugh/CuttingEdge/Reagan.html">Governor Ronald Reagan’s new “equal education plan.”</a> The plan called for a modest tuition of $250 per year (worth approximately $2,500 today) for the university and $80 per year in the state colleges (equivalent to $800 per year today).</p>
<p>The Republican reform plan included grants or loans to those who could not afford the modest tuition. He noted that half of the enrolled students came from relatively affluent families. Only about 12 percent came from modest-income families earning $6,000 year or less (about $60,000 today). </p>
<p>When Deukmejian took office as governor in 1983, he <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1982/12/28/science/california-weighs-end-of-free-college-education.html">continued</a> to impose tuition charges on students at the University of California and other state colleges.</p>
<h2>The realities today</h2>
<p>Today, California’s higher education system struggles with budget cuts and an uncertain future. The reasons are many.</p>
<p>The percentage of Californians seeking to go to college gradually increased, and so did the overall number of high school graduates. Consequently, the expansion in college enrollments over a little more than a half-century was incredibly large. </p>
<p>In 1960, for example, the total enrollment for all institutions in the state was 234,000. By 2015 University of California enrolled 253,000 students at 10 campuses, California State University enrolled 395,000 students at 16 campuses, and the community colleges enrolled 1,138,000 at 113 campuses. This was a <a href="http://www.lao.ca.gov/handouts/education/2017/Overview_of_Higher_Education_in_California_083117.pdf">seven-fold enrollment increase</a> since 1960 – the most among all states in the nation. </p>
<p>In contrast to 1960, <a href="http://www.lao.ca.gov/handouts/education/2017/Overview_of_Higher_Education_in_California_083117.pdf">student fees and tuition increased</a> while state general fund subsidies per student tapered. In 2015, tuition charges at UC were $12,240, a tenfold increase over 1960.</p>
<p>During the past four decades, California’s public colleges and universities have <a href="http://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/r_0917hj3r.pdf">endured lean budgets</a>. The start of this came about in 1978, when <a href="http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1904938,00.html">passage of Proposition 13</a> placed a ceiling on property taxes, which, among others, had helped provide revenues to the state for meeting expenditures for public education.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190051/original/file-20171012-31414-w0mb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190051/original/file-20171012-31414-w0mb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190051/original/file-20171012-31414-w0mb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190051/original/file-20171012-31414-w0mb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190051/original/file-20171012-31414-w0mb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190051/original/file-20171012-31414-w0mb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190051/original/file-20171012-31414-w0mb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Signs from students who came together from all California university campuses to protest against tuition hikes in November 2009.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/42047737@N07/4119078870/in/photolist-9nCY4K-bUCrXX-9nFYNY-bzQeJW-cbZFeo-7gWjGZ-8HcCJd-7gWzBa-bUCrMp-cbZFA1-bUCryX-bzQeM5-9nCYrX-9nCXvr-8HcGNE-9nFZUQ-7gWzBg-8HcGpf-8HcGQL-8HcGBL-8HcH1y-8H9yRT-7gZmDd-8H9yZt-7gZmDf-8HcGo9-8HcGUq-7gWjGX-8H9yHr-8H9yPB-8H9zdD-7gZPR1-7gZPQN-7h1zwh-7gWzB4-7gWjH4-7gWzAZ-7gZPR7-8HcGSd-7gZmDh-GYJ4xU-7gZPQQ-bUCs4T-bUCrzP-cbZEXy-cbZEV9-cbZENo-bNJT5v-8HcGJo-7gWjGV">Sarah Smith</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today there are concerns that the public universities, as a result of budget cuts, are soon going to be <a href="http://stanford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.11126/stanford/9780804780506.001.0001/upso-9780804780506">“public no more.”</a> As education scholar <a href="https://scholars.opb.msu.edu/en/persons/brendan-j-cantwell">Brendan Cantwell</a> notes, even the preeminent research university, Berkeley, has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-berkeleys-budget-cuts-tell-us-about-americas-public-universities-54997">hit by budget cuts</a>. At the same time, the state’s outstanding private colleges and universities <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21560290">have soared</a> in terms of academic standards, selective admissions, tuition revenues, new construction and federal research grants. </p>
<p>The master plan has struggled to keep up. It has gone through many reviews and revisions, the latest of which, in 2017, emphasized improving access and <a href="https://edsource.org/2017/college-leaders-urge-changes-to-californias-higher-education-master-plan-to-improve-access-and-affordability/586647">affordability.</a></p>
<p>But the convergence of these trends, combined with <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21560290">fluctuations in the state economy and tax revenues</a>, has turned the Californian dream of higher education into an American dilemma. </p>
<h2>California dreaming: Questions ahead</h2>
<p>In truth, the 1960 Master Plan was hardly a panacea for making a college education available to all. It has, however, been an enduring document with its essential principles and goals.</p>
<p>To go from the ideal to the real requires attention to the context of a new era.</p>
<p>In looking ahead, California’s higher education system faces <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Excellence.html?id=liE59woX624C">the challenge</a> that president of the Ford Foundation, John Gardner, a Californian, aptly posed in 1961:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Can we be equal and excellent, too?” </p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>Read more about the past and future of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/california-dream-39642">California Dream</a>. This series is published in collaboration with KQED.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84557/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John R. Thelin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Post-World War II California built an unrivalled system of higher education combining access, affordability and choice. Then a contraction of the vision came in the 1980s.John R. Thelin, University Research Professor, University of KentuckyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/219722014-01-22T19:40:53Z2014-01-22T19:40:53ZAn insider’s story of the global attack on climate science<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39494/original/3wg35tb8-1390268706.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Stormy weather hits New Zealand's capital, Wellington.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr.com/wiifm69 (Sean Hamlin)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A recent headline – <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/9600410/Failed-doubters-trust-leaves-taxpayers-at-loss">Failed doubters trust leaves taxpayers six-figure loss</a> – marked the end of a four-year epic saga of secretly-funded climate denial, harassment of scientists and tying-up of valuable government resources in New Zealand. </p>
<p>It’s likely to be a familiar story to my scientist colleagues in Australia, the UK, USA and elsewhere around the world. </p>
<p>But if you’re not a scientist, and are genuinely trying to work out who to believe when it comes to climate change, then it’s a story you need to hear too. Because while the New Zealand fight over climate data appears finally to be over, it’s part of a much larger, ongoing war against evidence-based science.</p>
<h2>From number crunching to controversy</h2>
<p>In 1981 as part of my PhD work, I produced a <a href="http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resources/nz-temp-record/review/changes/seven-station-series-temperature-data">seven-station New Zealand temperature series</a>, known as 7SS, to monitor historic temperature trends and variations from Auckland to as far south as Dunedin in southern New Zealand.</p>
<p>A decade later, in 1991-92 while at the NZ Meteorological Service, I revised the 7SS using a new <a href="http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resources/nz-temp-record/seven-station-series-temperature-data/references">homogenisation</a> approach to make New Zealand’s temperature records more accurate, such as adjusting for when temperature gauges were moved to new sites. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39364/original/fs9j5gfb-1390183067.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39364/original/fs9j5gfb-1390183067.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39364/original/fs9j5gfb-1390183067.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39364/original/fs9j5gfb-1390183067.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39364/original/fs9j5gfb-1390183067.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39364/original/fs9j5gfb-1390183067.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39364/original/fs9j5gfb-1390183067.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39364/original/fs9j5gfb-1390183067.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Kelburn Cable Car trundles up into the hills of Wellington.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/amorfati.art</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, in 1928 <a href="http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resources/nz-temp-record/why-climate-data-sometimes-needs-to-be-adjusted/combining-temperature-data-from-multiple-sites-in-wellington">Wellington’s temperature gauge</a> was relocated from an inner suburb near sea level up into the hills at Kelburn, where - due to its higher, cooler location - it recorded much cooler temperatures for the city than before. </p>
<p>With statistical analysis, we could work out how much Wellington’s temperature has <em>really</em> gone up or down since the city’s temperature records began back in 1862, and how much of that change was simply due to the gauge being moved uphill. (You can read more about re-examining NZ temperatures <a href="http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resources/nz-temp-record/why-climate-data-sometimes-needs-to-be-adjusted">here</a>.)</p>
<p>So far, so uncontroversial.</p>
<p>But then in 2008, while working for a NZ government-owned research organisation, the <a href="http://www.niwa.co.nz/">National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA)</a>, we updated the 7SS. And we found that at those seven stations across the country, from Auckland down to Dunedin, between 1909 and 2008 there was a warming trend of 0.91°C.</p>
<p>Soon after that, things started to get heated.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Climate_Science_Coalition">New Zealand Climate Science Coalition</a>, linked to a global climate change denial group, the <a href="http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/">International Climate Science Coalition</a>, began to question the adjustments I had made to the 7SS. </p>
<p>And rather than ever contacting me to ask for an explanation of the science, as I’ve tried to briefly cover above, the Coalition appeared determined to find a conspiracy.</p>
<h2>“Shonky” claims</h2>
<p>The attack on the science was led by then MP for the free market <a href="http://www.act.org.nz/">ACT New Zealand</a> party, Rodney Hide, who <a href="http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1002/S00101.htm">claimed in the NZ Parliament</a> in February 2010 that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>NIWA’s raw data for their official temperature graph shows no warming. But NIWA shifted the bulk of the temperature record pre-1950 downwards and the bulk of the data post-1950 upwards to produce a sharply rising trend… NIWA’s entire argument for warming was a result of adjustments to data which can’t be justified or checked. It’s shonky.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Mr Hide’s attack continued for 18 months, with more than 80 parliamentary questions being put to NIWA between February 2010 and July 2011, all of which required NIWA input for the answers.</p>
<p>The science minister asked NIWA to re-examine the temperature records, which required several months of science time. In December 2010, the results were in. After the methodology was reviewed and endorsed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, it was found that at the seven stations from Auckland to Dunedin, between 1909 and 2008 there was a warming trend of 0.91°C. </p>
<p>That is, the same result as before.</p>
<p>But in the meantime, before NIWA even had had time to produce that report, a new line of attack had been launched.</p>
<h2>Off to court</h2>
<p>In July 2010, a statement of claim against NIWA was filed in the High Court of New Zealand, under the guise of a new charitable trust: the New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust (NZCSET). Its trustees were all members of the NZ Climate Science Coalition.</p>
<p>The NZCSET challenged the decision of NIWA to publish the adjusted 7SS, claiming that the “unscientific” methods used created an unrealistic indication of climate warming.</p>
<p>The Trust ignored the evidence in the <a href="http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resources/nz-temp-record/seven-station-series-temperature-data/references">Meteorological Service report I first authored</a>, which stated a particular adjustment methodology had been used. The Trust incorrectly claimed this methodology should have been used but wasn’t.</p>
<p>In July 2011 the Trust produced a document that attempted to reproduce the Meteorological Service adjustments, but failed to, instead making lots of errors.</p>
<p>On September 7 2012, High Court Justice Geoffrey Venning delivered a <a href="http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/nz%20climate%20science%20v%20niwa.pdf">49-page ruling</a>, finding that the NZCSET had not succeeded in any of its challenges against NIWA. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39482/original/3sv3jty6-1390266868.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39482/original/3sv3jty6-1390266868.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39482/original/3sv3jty6-1390266868.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39482/original/3sv3jty6-1390266868.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39482/original/3sv3jty6-1390266868.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39482/original/3sv3jty6-1390266868.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39482/original/3sv3jty6-1390266868.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39482/original/3sv3jty6-1390266868.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The NZ weather wars in the news.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The New Zealand Herald</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The judge was particularly critical about retired journalist and NZCSET Trustee Terry Dunleavy’s <a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10834154">lack of scientific expertise</a>.</p>
<p>Justice Venning described some of the Trust’s evidence as <a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10834154">tediously lengthy</a> and said “it is particularly unsuited to a satisfactory resolution of a difference of opinion on scientific matters”.</p>
<h2>Taxpayers left to foot the bill</h2>
<p>After <a href="http://www.niwa.co.nz/news/niwa%E2%80%99s-climate-science-vindicated-in-court-of-appeal">an appeal that was withdrawn</a> at the last minute, late last year the NZCSET was ordered to pay NIWA NZ$89,000 in costs from the original case, plus further costs from the appeal.</p>
<p>But just this month, we have learned that the people behind the NZCSET have sent it into liquidation as they cannot afford the fees, leaving the New Zealand taxpayer at a substantial, six-figure loss.</p>
<p>Commenting on the lost time and money involved with the case, <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/9600968/Failed-doubters-trust-leaves-taxpayers-at-loss">NIWA’s chief executive John Morgan has said</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On the surface it looks like the trust was purely for the purpose of taking action, which is not what one would consider the normal use of a charitable trust.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This has been an insidious saga. The Trust aggressively attacked the scientists, instead of engaging with them to understand the technical issues; they ignored evidence that didn’t suit their case; and they regularly misrepresented NIWA statements by taking them out of context. </p>
<p>Yet their attack has now been repeatedly rejected in Parliament, by scientists, and by the courts.</p>
<p>The end result of the antics by a few individuals and this Trust is probably going to be a six-figure bill for New Zealanders to pay.</p>
<p>My former colleagues have had valuable weeks tied up with wasted time in defending these manufactured allegations. That’s time that could have profitably been used investigating further what is happening with our climate.</p>
<p>But there is a bigger picture here too.</p>
<h2>Merchants of doubt</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/">Doubt-mongering</a> is an old strategy. It is a strategy that has been pursued before to combat the ideas that cigarette smoking is harmful to your health, and it has been assiduously followed by climate deniers for the past 20 years.</p>
<p>One of the best known international proponents of such strategies is US think tank, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heartland_Institute">Heartland Institute</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39200/original/4d6rwhyz-1389858850.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39200/original/4d6rwhyz-1389858850.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39200/original/4d6rwhyz-1389858850.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39200/original/4d6rwhyz-1389858850.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39200/original/4d6rwhyz-1389858850.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39200/original/4d6rwhyz-1389858850.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39200/original/4d6rwhyz-1389858850.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39200/original/4d6rwhyz-1389858850.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The first in a planned series of anti-global warming billboards in the US, comparing “climate alarmists” with terrorists and mass murderers. The campaign was canned after a backlash.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Heartland Institute</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Just to be clear: there is no evidence that the Heartland Institute helped fund the NZ court challenge. In 2012, one of the Trustees who brought the action against NIWA <a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10834154">said Heartland had not donated anything</a> to the case.</p>
<p>However, Heartland is known to have been active in NZ in the past, providing funding to the <a href="http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=12&Itemid=45">NZ Climate Science Coalition and a related International Coalition</a>, as well as financially backing prominent climate “sceptic” campaigns in <a href="http://www.canberratimes.com.au/environment/climate-change/web-leak-shows-trail-of-climate-sceptic-funding-20120217-1tegk.html">Australia</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39199/original/dp3ws6g7-1389856528.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39199/original/dp3ws6g7-1389856528.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39199/original/dp3ws6g7-1389856528.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39199/original/dp3ws6g7-1389856528.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39199/original/dp3ws6g7-1389856528.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39199/original/dp3ws6g7-1389856528.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39199/original/dp3ws6g7-1389856528.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39199/original/dp3ws6g7-1389856528.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An extract from a 1999 letter from the Heartland Institute to tobacco company Philip Morris.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">University of California, San Francisco, Legacy Tobacco Documents Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Heartland Institute also has a long record of <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/heartland-institutes-corporate-shilling-is-nothing-new-20120222">working with tobacco companies</a>, as the letter on the right illustrates. (You can read that letter and other industry documents <a href="http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/jvy82i00/pdf">in full here</a>. Meanwhile, Heartland’s reply to critics of its tobacco and fossil fuel campaigns is <a href="http://heartland.org/reply-to-critics">here</a>.)</p>
<p>Earlier this month, the news broke that major tobacco companies will finally admit they <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/deal-reached-on-tobacco-firm-corrective-statements/2014/01/10/bc960eca-7a47-11e3-8963-b4b654bcc9b2_story.html">“deliberately deceived the American public”</a>, in <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1004256-proposed-consent-order-on-corrective-statements.html">“corrective statements”</a> that would run on prime-time TV, in newspapers and even on cigarette packs. </p>
<p>It’s taken <a href="http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/with-1200-deaths-a-day-tobacco-companies-finally-agree-to-publish-ads-admitting-they-lied-about-dangers-of-smoking-140115?news=852174">a 15-year court battle</a> with the US government to reach this point, and it shows that evidence can trump doubt-mongering in the long run.</p>
<p>A similar day may come for those who actively work to cast doubt on climate science.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/21972/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jim Salinger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A recent headline – Failed doubters trust leaves taxpayers six-figure loss – marked the end of a four-year epic saga of secretly-funded climate denial, harassment of scientists and tying-up of valuable…Jim Salinger, Honorary Research Associate in Climate Science, School of Environment, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata RauLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.