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Profits and Professors

Fonte: HARRIS, C. E., PRITCHARD, M. S., RABINS, M. J. Engineering ethics: concepts & cases. 4 ed. [S.l.]:
Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009.

A Wall Street Journal article reports:


High-tech launches from universities frequently can't get off the ground
without a steady supply of students, who are often the most talented and
the most willing to toil around the clock. But intense schedules on the job
can keep students from doing their best academic work. And when both
student and teacher share a huge financial incentive to make a company a
success, some professors might be tempted to look the other way when
studies slip or homework gets in the way.
In some instances, the article claims, students seriously consider leaving school
before completing their degrees in order devote themselves more fully to work that is
financially very attractive.
In 1999, Akamai won the MIT Sloan eCommerce Award for Rookie of the Year, an
award to the startup company that seems most likely to dominate its field. The article
comments,
No company has been more closely tied to MIT. The firm has its roots in a
research project directed by Mr. Leighton (Computer Systems Engineering
professor at MIT) about 3 years ago. Daniel Lewin, one of Mr. Leighton's
graduate students, came up with a key idea for how to apply algorithms, or
numerical instructions for computers, to Internet congestion problems.
Soon, Mr. Leighton and Mr. Lewin teamed up to form Akamai, hiring 15
undergraduates to help code the algorithms.
They tried to separate their MIT and Akamai responsibilities. Mr. Leighton advised Mr.
Lewin to get a second professor to co-sign his master's thesis "because he worried
about the appearance of conflict in his supervising Mr. Lewin's academic work while
also pursuing a business venture with him." It turns out that the co-signer was
someone involved in Mr. Lewin's original research project, who sometime after the
completion of Mr. Lewin's thesis became a part-time research scientist at Akamai.
Akamai continues to rely heavily on MIT students as employees. However, it does not
hire students full-time before they have completed their undergraduate degree. Still,
the opportunities seem very attractive. According to the article, Luke Matkins took a
summer job with Akamai in the summer after his sophomore year. By age 21, prior to
completing his degree, he was making $75,000 a year and was given 60,000 shares of
stock estimated to be worth more than $1 million.
Mr. Matkins grades suffered because his work left him too little time to complete all of
his homework assignments. However, he apparently has no regrets: "Mr. Matkins
says the prospect of being a millionaire by his senior year is 'very cool.' He loves MIT,
but in many ways, he says, Akamai has become his real university. 'There are different
ways to learn stuff,' he says. 'I've learned more at Akamai than I would in a

classroom.'"
The article notes that Mr. Lewin's doctoral dissertation will be based on his work at
Akamai, although he'll probably need permission from the Akamai board of directors to
use some of the material. The article concludes, "He will also probably need approval
from Akamai's chief scientist, Mr. Leighton, who, it turns out, is his PhD adviser."

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