Ged,

I agree with you in that conceptually Universities (should) have a larger mission.
In practice, however, our opinion on the subject does not really matter in this case.


What matters is:

• What the License actually says, and 
• What a Court would interpret from what the License says.

The previous link to the ruling of the US Court of Appeals of the Federal Circuit
shows already that courts do not concur on the claim that Universities (despite
their non-profit status) are non-commercial entities.

A similar ruling was pronounced by a court in the UK:
http://www.informationtribunal.gov.uk/DB...

"We do not consider that the fundamentally charitable character of a
university means that it should have no commercial interests. A body which
depends on student fees to remain solvent has a commercial interest in
maintaining the assets upon which the recruitment of students depends.
Moreover, we accept on the evidence that UCLAN operates in competition with
other institutions of higher education in seeking to sell its products, namely
undergraduate courses, to potential students. Therefore, whether on a broad or
narrow construction of the statutory words, we are satisfied that UCLAN 's
interests in teaching material produced for its degree courses are properly
described as "commercial".

[... Ironically, this was a case in which the University itself was asking that the
court consider the University to  have commercial interests, in order to avoid
having to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request...]


This ruling is cited in the Creative Commons site, in the drafting of Version 4.0
of the CC Non Commercial License (the current version is 3.0).
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0/NonCommercial

The very topic of this thread is currently being discussed in the
drafting of the CC Non-Commercial 4.0 license.

In particular, you will find you point about the term "primarily".
A term that is currently being dropped from the text of the 4.0
version of the license.

The new (proposed) text from section 4.b will just read:

"You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation."

instead of the current:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-n...

"You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation."

Additionally, there is a section to include an explicit Proposal (No.12) to
define NC to specifically allow "educational uses".

Note that this is different from "research" use. Which is closer to the topic of this thread.