RALEIGH, N.C. — Even before GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney picked U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate, a certain selfish, dead and enduringly controversial novelist already was enjoying an unusual boom in university classes, thanks to tens of millions of dollars in grants from a Winston-Salem, N.C.-based bank.

Now Ayn Rand, heartless arch-villain to some, triumphant free-market oracle to others, is under an even larger national spotlight because of her role as economic muse to Ryan.

Her work is a unique stew of fiction, economics and her own brand of philosophy — Objectivism — that includes the belief that the driving moral force in life should be the pursuit of "rational self-interest."

An outspoken atheist, supporter of abortion rights and adulteress, she can seem an unlikely hero for conservatives, at least those most concerned with social issues. Her views on unfettered free markets, limited government and personal responsibility, though, — and the way she expressed them — have always been powerful stuff.

Rand has long inspired a dedicated cadre of fans, including John Allison, the former CEO of the Winston-Salem, N.C., based bank Branch Banking & Trust (BB&T). Like Ryan, Allison was known for handing out copies of her popular 1957 polemic novel, "Atlas Shrugged," to his staff and others.

In recent years BB&T's charitable foundation awarded grants to dozens of colleges and universities to support teaching about capitalism, in many cases the moral aspects of free-market economics. The requirements often include teaching "Atlas Shrugged."

In 2008, a spokesman for the bank said it had made 37 grants worth a total of $38 million, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.

Typically the gifts range from $400,000 to $2 million.

The bank's charitable wing also teamed with the Anthem Foundation, which promotes Rand's work, to make grants to UNC-Chapel Hill's philosophy department and Duke University's Philosophy, Politics and Economics Program.

Allison retired in 2008 and recently was named to lead the libertarian Cato Institute, a think tank partly owned by conservative activists Charles and David Koch. BB&T spokeswoman Maria Lachapelle declined to say whether the bank foundation is still making the grants.

The terms vary, and universities don't always disclose them. One agreement, at Florida State University, mandates teaching Rand and dictates how many students the course would accommodate. The Ayn Rand Institute must be consulted on speakers for a lecture series, and every undergraduate business student gets a free copy of "Atlas Shrugged."

The grants spurred faculty uprisings at some schools. Critics protested that accepting such conditions with gifts opens universities — many of them cash-strapped after budget-cutting — to being bribed to teach material that fits a donor's agenda, but which may be substandard or otherwise inappropriate.

Meredith College rejected a $420,000 grant in 2005 after faculty voted against it, saying that it was crucial not to cede control to donors over what's taught.

At UNC-Charlotte and Western Carolina, faculty dissent led administrators to renegotiate the terms with BB&T, according to a 2010 story in the journal of the American Association of University Professors, by Gary H. Jones, an associate professor at Western Carolina. The bank agreed to concessions such as leaving it up to instructors whether to teach "Atlas Shrugged."

A consistent charge by Rand critics is that her work simply isn't very good, and that it has a reputation for prompting teenage infatuations that quickly wane.

Guilford College philosophy professor Richard Zweigenhaft said last week that he had one of those teen flings with Rand's fiction. It's fine, he said, for Guilford to teach "Atlas Shrugged" as long as it's the faculty's decision. But from a practical standpoint, he said, there isn't enough important material in the nearly 1,200-page tome to make teaching all of it worthwhile.

Economics professor Douglas Pearce wrote the application that won North Carolina State University (NCSU) a BB&T grant in 2007. The idea, he said, was to bolster instruction in the liberal-arts side of economics, something that his department felt it needed.

The money, $200,000 a year for 10 years, allowed NCSU to create a BB&T Center for the Study of Free Markets and Institutions. Among other things, it supports two classes on capitalism and will eventually endow a professorship.

Rand offers ample material for attacks and spin against a candidate like Ryan, who professes admiration for her views on economics and limited government, which her philosophy binds tightly to a rejection of religion. Also, her dismissal of altruism is easy to portray as harsh.

Then there are her personal failings, including a lengthy affair with an associate 25 years younger and an admiring infatuation with a murderer who had dismembered a 12-year-old girl.

A host of stories, postings and tweets since Ryan's ascension to the GOP ticket link him with all of Rand's views — including some he clearly doesn't hold, such as her firm atheism (religion, she wrote, is "a short-circuit destroying the mind") and support for abortion. Ryan is widely known as staunchly against abortion.

"Rand seems primarily something that will be used in smearing Ryan by saying, well, she was selfish and nonreligious, so he must be, too," said Craig M. Newmark, an associate professor who teaches one of the BB&T-supported courses at NCSU, including material from "Atlas Shrugged," but also from more than two dozen other writers.

Newmark said it's easy to distort Rand's work by reducing it all to one word: selfishness. "Atlas Shrugged," he said, could be shorter and better written, but has significantly more to offer than celebrating self-interest.

For example, it graphically conveys the dangers of business and government getting too cozy and fostering crony capitalism.

The point isn't to persuade students to embrace Rand, Newmark said. But teaching her ideas gets at a basic goal of higher education: exposing people to new ideas.

"One thing I try to get my students to do is to at least give the other side the courtesy of considering their views, and try to understand them," Newmark said. "It's OK to have a point of view, but so often these days, it just seems like there is this iron door when someone else has a view that's different from yours. It's like, boom, down it comes and that's it, no listening, no learning."