This certainly isn’t the first time professors have pursued business careers on the side, but the latest wave of exchange traded funds (ETFs) and the surge in investor’s appetites has lured them out of academia and into your portfolios. Peter A. McKay for The Wall Street Journal sites Princeton University’s Burton Malkiel, the "efficient-market" philosopher, who believes all stocks have an equal chance for gains. He developed strategies for investors interested in China and is designing an index that will track China’s development.

Yale University’s Robert Shiller invented the oil trading tools called "macros" and gave the basis for futures contracts on housing prices on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Hedge funds have attracted the knowledge of many professors the past few years, and the demand doesn’t seem to be fading.

Wall Street firms have looked to scholars many times over. Technical fields and engineering students have offered their knowledge, particularly in Silicon Valley. And the Black-Scholes model was used to determine options prices. Professors get to test their theories in the real world, make money doing it and Wall Street reaps the formulas and success. It’s a win/win situation.