I'd like to add my opinion that while the Help section's bullet points on [What topics can I ask about here?][1] doesn't come right out and exclude academic research or student projects, the term **Professional Capacity** should **NOT** include these.  Students coming to ServerFault discussing a project they are working on for school and needing assistance should be considered Off-Topic.

There are gray areas, as always (student intern being paid to work on a corporate project), but by and large student questions should be considered off-topic as they don't fall under **professional capacity**.


  [1]: http://serverfault.com/help/on-topic