Often, there is no “smoking gun” pointing to clear evidence of mismanagement, underhanded dealings, or even possibly illegal actions. These things do all happen, and they can indeed be uncovered. A far more common source of institutional trouble, however, is simply the current financialized status quo which (to the extent it is not well understood) functions as a potent tool of power because it is premised on lack of transparency. This lack of transparency lies at the root of two basic challenges: one, a default reliance on increasingly autocratic managerial styles, since information about finances has become increasingly siloed and specialized; two, difficulty finding alternatives to the default imposition of austerity, since disclosures that could reveal things like endowment kickbacks, political influences, outsourcing costs, particular investment vehicles and related conflicts of interest, for-profit takeovers of publicly-funded research, and actual investment fees and rates of return are not currently in place. Consequently, private and for-profit moneyed interests are given considerable latitude to capture a substantial portion of a public and ostensibly non-profit good.
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