Degrees of Compromise probes the convergence of for-profit business collaborations with higher education. Interdisciplinary in scope, the collection questions the effects of commercialization activities on undergraduate student values and graduate education practice and ethics, research autonomy, institutional prestige, and scientific imperatives such as objectivity.

Included are philosophical analyses of the professional status of faculty in higher education; ethnographic explorations of technology transfer, laboratory design, scientific assumptions, and graduate education; and a quantitative assessment of patenting and its relationship to institutional prestige and resources.