MIT, Cambirdge U. Will Form Partnership

In a new partnership that will use American talent to bring business to the United Kingdom, the British government has agreed to pay $113 million for an initiative between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Cambridge.

With another $22 million from British industry, the two universities will exchange faculty, students and ideas.

"It is of great advantage to Britain's future development that we are able to attract to Britain those dynamic institutions in the United States economy that have made a huge difference to the creation of businesses and jobs," said Gordon Brown, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The British government hopes the two universities will exchange technology, research techniques and educational philosophies. According to Cambridge vice chancellor Sir Alec Broers, his university is interested in combining engineering and management education.

The two universities hope that this and other initiatives will expand the interface between the modern university and industry.

Representatives of the two schools say collaboration could help them develop programs that will stimulate emerging technologies.

Just as the new partnership stretches across international borders, the two schools hope their cooperation with industry--particularly in the United Kingdom--will improve productivity in an expanding global economy.

"For the University of Cambridge, this new partnership represents an opportunity to capitalize on MIT's entrepreneurial culture; and to collaborate in extending MIT's model of university-industrial partnership to the United Kingdom," said MIT Chancellor Lawrence Bacow in a press release.

The partnership will also allow 50 undergraduates to study abroad each year because the two institutions will offer common courses during the third year of study.

Opportunities for MIT students to study abroad are rare because of the school's high number of required courses. The joint curricula that will be developed under the Cambridge-MIT Institute, along with the aid of distance-learning technology, will allow students to take their classes on the other side of the pond.

Bacow added that the partnership will provide MIT with the opportunity to educate future European leaders, foster relationships with European industry and aid in recruiting the best students and faculty to learn and teach here in Cambridge. In his words, the collaboration allows each of the universities to "build strength upon strength."

The agreement comes after a year-and-a-half of negotiations between the two universities and the British government, which hopes the program will become self-sufficient after five years.

But some Cambridge University lecturers were reportedly not happy about the deal, in part because the cash will be released gradually over the next five years, The Times of London reported today.

Theology lecturer Gillian Evans was quoted in The Times as saying the deal "was being pushed for political not academic reasons" and would lessen the university's independence.

"We are now in a situation where the government can say they won't release the next slice of cash unless we do 'x,"' she said.

The Cambridge-MIT agreement comes on the heels of an expanding number of alliances between MIT and foreign universities and multinational corporations.

These partnerships are fully consistent with MIT's founding principles of the "dignity of useful work," Bacow said, adding that educational institutions need "to engage the world around them."

MIT already has distance-learning partnerships with the University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technical University, also in Singapore. MIT also now has a $20 million alliance with the Ford Motor Company, and a $30 million alliance with bio-tech giant Amgen.

And last month MIT partnered with Microsoft to explore uses of technology in higher education.

Wire services contributed to the reporting of this story.