Back in my day, a million years ago, a certain public institution I was aware of was jumping on the synergistic public-private partnerships which seemed to involve giving away very expensive land in exchange for the privilege of giving away very valuable public funded patents. To grease the wheels of these arrangement, faculty would get a few crumbs (most faculty will do just about anything for a few crumbs), key administrators would get more than a few crumbs, politicians were convinced they could get away with cutting funding and c) profit!. Someone would actually profit, anyway.
This might be an unfair characterization of these things. I never understood them because, well, I didn't understand them. Building tech office parks on prime university land because...what again? I suppose it was not for mere mortals like me to reason why.
Somebody's making money. It isn't the students.
