I'd like to add my opinion that while the Help section's bullet points on What topics can I ask about here? 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.