Some great points made above, yes. You see some of the pitfalls that have happened with favoring close connections over sound business decisions, but as some of you correctly point out, the sound business decisions are not clear-cut either.

* University overhead can make an animal study nearly twice as expensive as doing it at a CRO
* Personal relationships can make problem solving a little more nuanced.
* University contracting and Tech Transfer departments are extremely slow. (Why wouldn’t these same departments be as slow at a CRO?)