> Say a professor starts a company, is it ethical for him to ask students to work for him? If a student starts a company, and an influential professor wants a board seat, can the 19yo student comfortably say no?

I'm not sure why these are particular concerns with a venture fund backed by the University's investment office focused on endeavors emerging from the university community (faculty, staff, and alumni.) They are issues that, to the extent that they exist with such a venture, exist whenever students and faculty members are involved in business ventures (no matter whether they receive funding for those ventures from a university-affiliated venture fund), and are quite likely already addressed in university academic ethics and conduct rules.

Agreed. While the method may be new (a university fund specifically dedicated to startups), the fact is that academic research has led to the creation of companies, patents, etc., in other fields for decades now. TFA: "The University of California has been granted more patents than any other university in the world and has over 30 accelerators and incubators. More than 800 startups with UC patents have been founded since 1980."

And it probably won't be 19yo students, it will be graduate, PhD, and post-docs, many of whom are actively trying to find the next big thing in their field.

Doesn't seem like much news here other than good press for the UC system, and good on them for making dollars easier to get besides trying for an NSF grant.

Universities are already pre-professional for the vast majority of students. I think the idea of a university being a place of exploration and self-discovery is a lofty ideal of a bygone era for all but children of the upper middle class and wealthy. College used to be more optional; today it's practically a prerequisite for a middle class lifestyle.

Except it really isn't any more. If all you want is a job, there are tons of resources online that will give you much more practical experience than universities. All that it's really missing is some accreditation for employers to use to filter out the talent from the dead weight. University idealism is alive and well I think if you look past the undergraduate programs you'd agree.

If all you want is a job then this will be easier if your diploma says UC Berkeley vs self-taught. We can split hairs all day about exceptional cases of people being great at something without a formal education but for the great majority of people a college degree is simply the new minimal education that employers are seeking.

The lofty ideal is still alive and kicking at Berkeley's peers on the Top 20 lists. College as a box to check off disinterestedly is more the purview of a mediocre football-obsessed and frat-oriented institution than an intellectual beacon like Berkeley.

You picked an outlier top university frequented by the offspring of the upper middle class and wealthy. My point stands -- the notion is elitist and has no hope of reflecting the reality of most Americans' relationship with higher education.

I picked Berkeley because it's what TFA is about, and it's ridiculous that higher education should be one-size-fits-all. Such a move might be less disturbing, even welcome, from an institution which is already a job training center. It's still problematic that it's happening at Berkeley.

Many universities already have a technology transfer office of some sort, for work done by researchers on staff using university resources. TTOs mostly deal patent management, but sometimes they fund spin-off companies as well.

Extending this kind of resource to entrepreneurial students is a pretty natural move.

This is an idealized view of science and academia that has no grounding in reality. People in academia feel a lot of pressure to research specific topics. The pressure is not necessarily from the market, but from publications. If you "explore your interests" without looking at what would be publishable or not, chances are you're not gonna get a job in academia. These considerations of publication are often quite short-term oriented. Conversely, you find investors comfortable in investing in businesses having slim chances of profitability before at least 10 years, because fundamental research can lead to huge market gains down the road.

So it's far from being a case of intellectual freedom against quick profits.