NDA and academia? I guess that's considered normal but it would be good if there were checks and balances on the NDAs.
It’s definitely not normal, and should actually raise some red flags. I would like to know which institution does this sort of things.
I was intimidated into signed an NDA which says I can't talk about the NDA. The threats were serious, and I don't talk about that NDA.
Unless you're at senior levels of your university, you wouldn't know about sketchy stuff like this going on.
The way to solve this would be to extend restrictions on federal grant funding and financial aid to only encompass institutions which don't use tools like this.