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Consulting and giving expert advice, such as when acting as an expert witness, are further somewhat muddy realms where income, often very significant, can be earned by academics by virtue of their employment by their host institution. Although many academics would complain were the university employer to take a proportion of such income, it is hard to see why the employer should not have some rights.

In addition, if a professionally-run organisation manages and organises the consultancies on behalf of academics, it is quite likely that even after this body has taken a percentage the professors can be much better rewarded. This is because academics are notoriously bad at negotiating fees for consultancies and similar activities. I like to recount the tale, probably not apocryphal, of the Oxford academic who was invited to appear on a BBC television programme for a fee of £50. He wrote back immediately accepting the invitation and enclosing his cheque.

Academic lawyers can, not infrequently, receive large sums in arbitration cases, but they would not have been selected were it not for the post they hold in a Law Faculty.

In such areas there is a strong case to be made for these outside activities being properly organised by the university, which would then take some financial benefit. Instituting change along these lines, however, would certainly generate opposition.