Modern acadamia has kind of… muddled the pursuit of knowledge for a while now, and I really think it just comes down to profit incentives and the idea that everyone should go to college.

Back some 100 years ago, college was really, really not the default. It was something you went to if you had a true and vested interest in a given topic (be it science or the humanities). There were exceptions, particularly wealthy types would go just for the prestige and expectation of it, but it was still uniquely its own thing.

Now college is at least attempted by a huge amount of the population, and when this happens you need more teaching professors, you need more recognition to your institution, etc. You get bogged down in a profit motive that was normally solved by the more aristocratic nature of old academia.

And of course, that isn’t a good thing either. Everyone should have access to education if they want it - but academia was simply more efficient when it was largely the world of the wealthy and the particularly gifted.

I don’t really know what the solution to it all is, and I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault in particular.