While Sasser asserts that HBS “culture” dictates that professors spend the majority of their time in the classroom, HBS tradition also fosters an atmosphere in which an enormous amount of outside educational endeavors are taken on by the institution itself.

The Harvard Business School Press has, since its conception in the 1920s, published materials that are distributed for the sole purpose of educating outside corporations. HBS Press also sells teaching software that companies have installed on desktops by the millions, such as ManageMentor, a program installed on millions of desktop computers to teach business leadership skills.

HBS Press says this emphasis on e-learning is a commitment to educating members of the business world.

But HBS professors can also be rented to train a particular company’s workers in its Executive MBA program. This program is essentially a service to corporations who are willing to pay for professor’s expertise. Time devoted to Executive MBA programs is counted as efforts toward outside activity.

“Virtually every major business school has executive education as part of its overall offering and Stanford and Harvard are no exception to that,” Rudolph says.

However, Clark reaffirms that HBS is selective about which programs it lets its faculty participate in.

Professors are encouraged to only take on those projects that will provide them with interesting case material and possibilities for further research opportunities. Strict guidelines stipulate that these executive education programs only be offered to top executives, as opposed to junior managers, and that the company must be on the cutting edge of its field.

The company also has to sign a form agreeing to the release of all data from the consultation case so that HBS professors can use the information in their research and classes.

“Proper work benefits the development of the faculty and school,” Clark says. “More broadly, we see the development of intellectual capital and capabilities when the faculty stay close to practice.”

Clark says that there have been numerous times when he has rejected offers from companies who want to employ HBS, despite the potential for lucrative compensation.

He says one company recently asked HBS to train 80 executives, four times a year, for a period of two weeks each.

Although the company was willing to pay close to $10 million annually for the service, the offer was rejected because the program would prove to be too repetitive for HBS faculty.

“We turn offers down all the time,” Clark says. “We try to balance the needs of our school and the interests of our faculty.”

Kester adds that many professors engage in pro-bono outside work for charitable organizations, saying that “professors are not ignorant of the compensation price” but that extra wages are not the driving force behind outside activity.

“The number of charitable and non-profit and unpaid activities that professors engage in are enormous,” Kester says. “For some people, it dominates.”