Market forces, when viewed from the perspective of faculty salaries alone, clearly indicate that the highest and best use of a faculty member's time and expertise is no longer university employment. As a result, many productive faculty members are becoming increasingly dissatisfied, and many top domestic undergraduate students are eliminating academia as an employment alternative. This trend operates to the long-run detriment of the land grant university system. In part, these forces are a direct result of outdated and/or unimaginative administrative policies, inadequate reward systems, and the inability of the profession to demonstrate its productivity in terms that society understands and appreciates. Implications are drawn for land grant consulting and grantsmanship policy.