In my experience, "getting stuff done" in the academic world isn't about making money for the business owner. It's about teaching students. So I think your stat

In my experience, "getting stuff done" in the academic world isn't about making money for the business owner. It's about teaching students. So I think your statement is a little unfair. Network admins, DBAs, and developers have to keep the infrastructure working so people can teach, and students can learn. Try explaining to a student that you lost her transcripts, or explain to the government how someone got in and got 10,000 SSNs from your database. The challenges are the same. But it's a lot harder when you can't hire the DBAs who know how to stop that kind of stuff cos you can only pay $50,000. And there's no shortage of under-qualified IT "professionals" in industry. If you've ever done code audits for others, like I have, you know what I'm talking about.