[cerrelio]

Then that academic can make a company out of it, and charge $2000/hr. :)

The issue is academics cashing in on their research. I think this is fine in general. Having been through grad school I've worked with professors who I felt placed their entrepreneurial endeavors ahead of their educational requirements. This is an ugly practice. Ethical standards need to be in place to address this. If you're primarily conducting business using your academic credentials, then relinquish your chair to someone else, and take up some "fluff" title and pay your grad students out of your own kitty. Also, pay the university for the non-human resources you use, because it's like you're a hairstylist renting a chair in a salon to obtain and service clients.

I think this is primarily the reason why there's a generation of postdocs sitting on the sidelines waiting for a full professorship. They eventually get bored (and hungry) and move into the private sector, robbing academia of fresh blood and new ideas. So a de facto privatization of research emerges. We all lose when this gets out of hand.

[JadeNB]

> If you're primarily conducting business using your academic credentials, then relinquish your chair to someone else, and take up some "fluff" title and pay your grad students out of your own kitty.

This may be fair to ask of the professor, but it is perhaps reasonable to consider whether it is fair to ask of his or her graduate students (who are probably not to be blamed for their advisors' extracurricular habits). I work in math, where corporate sponsorship is (generally) not an issue, and so my opinion may be skewed; but it seems to me that a graduate student of someone with a 'fluff' title might be perceived less seriously than a graduate student of someone with a grander academic title, and so suffer even if his or her work is sterling. (On the other hand, perhaps driving students away from working with corporate consultants is a desireable side effect …?)