Last week, the USC board of trustees went ahead with plans to give Assembly Street another shiny, new building in 2016, continuing the long streak of construction projects and renovations which have characterized the past few years.
This new building, which will set up shop down the road from the new Darla Moore School of Business on Blossom and Assembly, will be a technology research center, funded by a public-private partnership between USC and IBM.
(The research centers' activities will start in January and will be housed in university buildings until the new development is constructed.)
Perhaps the most headline-making aspect of the deal is a ten-year, $70 million provision which will allow IBM to run and oversee all of USC’s computer systems currently in place.
This marks the most recent instance of USC cutting deals with private corporations after its venture with the 650 Lincoln residence project, and there seems to be some good that will come from it.
First, the university will get a cut of the enterprises' profits, as well as garner tax money that USC will be able to leverage from the building. By finding new sources of private income, USC will be able to rely less on state funding, which is fickle even in the best of times.
Second, there will be more opportunities for technology and business-minded folks: students could be eligible for an indeterminate number of internship, while 60 USC technology employees will switch over to IBM, while continuing to receive university-esque benfits.
Finally, there’s a plan in place to use technology assets from the enterprise to give students a better idea of their scholastic strengths and weaknesses that will launch next year.
All of these benefits seem good on paper, and perhaps they will materialize in the way they’re supposed to as the project progresses.
However, literally all the information that we have about the research center is straight from the mouth of the companies involved. Other than press releases, there’s not much else to go on.
We're not saying the parties involved are necessarily hiding something — many concrete details of the deal were announced when trustees approved the agreement Friday.
But IBM hasn't released some relevant details and has yet to answer some questions outright.
For example, we have no idea what will happen after IBM’s 10-year deal, nor what forms this oversight would take in practice. When asked, IBM refused to answer questions posed by The State about the money it will make from side-contracts with other tech companies.
All in all, we’re glad that these benefits are apparently on their way, but we feel that there should be more transparency about the proceedings — especially for a project set to start in January.