Our top colleges and Universities in the United States of America have indeed always maintained a strong relationship with our fortune 500 companies, but has the relationship gotten too cozy over the last decade? And if so what will the future be?

Now before I say much more I will have to disclose that I am rather pro-business and only anti-learning institution due to the fact that I left school to build a franchising company almost 20-years ago.

What I see is that corporations are funding colleges and Universitys research for several reasons. By outsourcing their research and development departments they save the salaries, since students do most of the work and tedious works, which can costs hundreds of thousands in labor costs.

Secondly they can use the research papers to promote their corporations products and services. Also consider that having a group of brilliant students to choose from which now specialize in the exact science they need makes recruiting the best minds in the world very easy.

Of course the corporation, academic bond goes much deeper then research and development, as those corporations which fund the colleges various departments also get preferential treatment in recruitment for all their other corporate endeavors. All in all when a corporation adopts a college or University, it appears to be a win/win situation and that makes a lot of sense really. Consider this in 2006.