Inside Higher Ed: Coke and the Spellings Commission
Corporate sponsorship is pretty common these days — walk around campus, tour an art museum, listen to NPR, and you’ll quickly encounter the name of some benefactor. But should Education Department meetings about the future of higher education have corporate sponsors?
That’s the question some academics have been asking since invitations went out to the summit that will take place in June in Atlanta to discuss the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education. The invitations indicate that they are coming from Margaret Spellings, the secretary, but that the event is “hosted by the Coca-Cola Company at the Hilton Atlanta.” A similar reference to Coke as the host of the meeting appears on the department’s Web site. The Atlanta meeting is one of a series of regional conclaves the department is holding to follow up on a national summit it held in March.
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