ABSTRACT
The groundwork for US professors assuming multiple roles as teacher, researcher and entrepreneur was laid in the resolution of the controversy over consulting at MIT in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The rules adopted at MIT to resolve the particular controversy became a model for other universities and spread throughout US academia in the following decades. The controversy over consultation had broader implications for the definition of the professorial role. It is now taken for granted in the university that professors should do research as well as teach. However, when research was introduced in the mid-and late nineteenth century in the USA it was often controversial. There were charges of conflicts of interest. If a professor was going to do research would that not mean that they would be taking time away from their students? Therefore those professors who believed that teaching was the only appropriate role of the professor argued that research should not be allowed as a professorial role. Today, such a position would be seen as heresy, but at that time it was a matter of pointed debate.
