Well, the trend towards corporate sponsorship of Australian universities is now being examined in a Federal Senate inquiry. The terms of the financial agreement give Colgate Palmolive exclusive access to the institution's dentistry research. A public interest academic at the university, Dr William De Maria, says such deals are eroding public institutions, with the terms of corporate sponsorship often kept from public view. Rafael Epstein prepared this report.
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And so is corporate marketing. There's the Colgate Palmolive chair of General Practice Dentistry at The University of Queensland, The Microsoft chair of Computing at Macquarie University. And, even Aristocrat, the makers of pokie machines, have funded the Aristocrat chair of Gambling Research at The University of Western Sydney. Colgate's Queensland University deal guarantees them three months of exclusive access to research done at the university, ahead of their rivals. Dr William De Maria runs the university Centre for Public Administration.