1 Glomm Here to Eternity - The Musical!
Prologue.
[Voice-over, montage of picturesque concrete buldings, sun-bathed campus with cheerful students, brilliantly lit laboratory scenes, small but comfortable student cell-accommodation. 1950s band arrangement of Gaudeamus Igitur faintly heard between paragraphs].
In a distant galactic depression in the near future, new education Provider Wigg that has been taken over by Dauern, becomes in a short time a market-leader in online training seminars, with a broad global corporate shareholding, now named EwigDauern. The flagship product-line is the full-time Doctorhood, the famous crimson satin, with bright blue trim, for seven years of fees.
Every year students fill in their questionnaires for computer-examined grading, with a small panel for personal comments on teaching quality & pledge of commitment to the Provider.
The terms for obtaining grades are stated in the contract, notably giving up all rights to copyright in anything they have said, whatever, which is routinely recorded by their supervisors. Anything whatever that they have published through Ewigbook is of course the Provider’s copyright. All research results whatsoever belong to the corporation for use in whatsoever projects in the real world they can sell them to.
By the second year, deals between students & supervisors (who are only paid a small retainer) yield good earnings in payments to their charitable trusts. Governments of all stripes are guarantors of quality & keen buyers of the appropriate research when it has a symbiotic fit with their programmes. Corporations are also notable patrons, buying the research they need when they apply to government for contracts.
[to be continued]
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