I suggest that you remain neutral, and do not take any Districts. Teach your students with Pubs, and later FW. Once they are competent, you can seek out smaller corps who need bodies for their own PCs.

The Dust community has to agree as a whole NOT to take your districts and support you if someone does take your districts.

I also think when it comes to FPS your training methodology needs some improvement. I would be happy to help you guys in any way I can.

I will even support 1-3 districts being assigned to only you guys so that you can train people.

I think the suggestion was for your students to be true mercenaries in those cases, fighting for anyone and everyone who will give them a slot instead of for their own territory.

In that way, your support is completely neutral from a diplomatic standpoint.

"Oh, I'm sorry that you were upset that some of our students fought against you when Carebears, Inc. attacked you last night. If you'd like, I'd be happy to put together a squad for you guys tonight when they attack again."

A good point. You would have to freely allow your students to fight for any side they wish (even students on both sides of a battle), and Dust U could take no compensation for it.

I cannot promise anything as I have no power in PRO, but I will talk with ContraBanJoe and see what he says.
Ideally we can:
1.Provide protection for the few districts you own
2.Own the other districts on the same planet
3.Let our PRO newbies fight Dust Uni players so both get valuable training

This is mutually beneficial which is why I believe ContraBanJoe will help.

But again, I can't promise anything, its up to Joe on what to do, and all I can do is inform him of the option.

The main problem I see with this is recruits will be broke as kitten. If Dust University is to succeed, it needs venture capital funding. Owning districts and selling clones will help them achieve that.

If they are to train their recruits, fitting will become expensive and will become expensive fast. They either need high level donations or make their own income. And if you are training recruits they also need to be trained of various dropsuit levels and mods. Gets expensive fast.

Indeed, another valid reason for going with the community-protected "Planet of Education" model is that the neutral training corps could fight against each other for control of "spare" districts as part of the training. This would enable Dust Uni and some others to be a bit like Red-vs-Blue in EVE.

For instance, if three training corps control a 12 district planet, each one could get three "fixed" districts and the other three could be "sacrificial" districts.

If this arrangement was enforced by the Major League corps/alliances, it would provide a useful training ground for all sides.

This is a good idea. I think CCP should just assign 3-4 districts to DU and let them duke it out there. It will be a good source of income and practice for the students.

Being open is the key. Declare your position and post your rules.

From what I understand the client will need to provide the squad leaders anyway. Since there is no means to pass ISK outside of a corporation at this point you could have a channel where squad leaders could come and ask for mercenaries and their pay would come from the normal match mechanics. Unless you specifically banned certain corps or alliances from this "merc bazaar" then it would be up to each student to provide their services. Basically, you would have a "looking for squad" channel.

Once the game mechanics open up then methods of payment would have to be considered.

They wont make it! Is it too hard for you to understand that it will be very hard for DU to actually get merc contracts? Fighting other mercs will just be expensive, more than its worth it.

This is Dust. Not Eve! Things are different here;- unless some corp/alliance pays them a shitload of money to take over an empty district.

They need their own playground.

Yes, but I'd like to think of us as a bit more one on one than dust uni

The power blocs would agree to defend said planet from invaders while the owner of that planet provides the power blocs with fresh new recruits under the condition that no one power bloc is favored over the other.

This is a beta.... so beta test the idea of D-U taking part in PC and see if that meets your goals.