[82lsju]

Question: Would there be so much pushback around NIL if there were NIL payments for undergraduate engineers? What if UCLA found out that a Stanford engineer was close to a major breakthrough in the lab, and paid the engineer $800K to finish the work at UCLA? Would that ruffle feathers in the same way? Would that person be a sellout? My guess would be no. Engineering is an academic discipline that leads to a respected professional career, so there's nothing wrong with being wooed by money earlier in the lifecycle. 

<disclaimer - I realize this post is "out there". Feel free to ignore and please give me a pass for being a little nutty today>

the engineer would probably create a start-up to monetize the idea.  Of course if the intellectual property is at least partially Stanford's they would get a piece of the start-up.

[82lsju]

Question: Would there be so much pushback around NIL if there were NIL payments for undergraduate engineers? What if UCLA found out that a Stanford engineer was close to a major breakthrough in the lab, and paid the engineer $800K to finish the work at UCLA? Would that ruffle feathers in the same way? Would that person be a sellout? My guess would be no. Engineering is an academic discipline that leads to a respected professional career, so there's nothing wrong with being wooed by money earlier in the lifecycle. 

<disclaimer - I realize this post is "out there". Feel free to ignore and please give me a pass for being a little nutty today>

the engineer would probably create a start-up to monetize the idea.  Of course if the intellectual property is at least partially Stanford's they would get a piece of the start-up.