It seems to me that the "elephant in the room" no one has mentioned yet w.r.t. academia is the model of modern academic administration, where universities are run like cruise ships (look at the perks kids are paying for these days!) with hedge funds attached, and have no "skin in the game" with regard to the incredibly high financial risks that students take when they pay for tuition.
If: (a) students paid 1/10 of what they pay today[0], (b) all the on-campus expensive perks were ended (new buildings sold, etc.) and the administration headcount dropped to 1 per every 50 students, (c) tuition went directly to professors, research, and basic groundskeeping, (d) some kind of financial arrangement were put in place so universities had skin in the game with regard to the success of their graduates[0]
then I'm positive the academic system would become far more effective at educating students and preparing them for life, and there would be a positive trickle-down effect to scientific research and the politics there.
[0] State-funded secondary education in European countries costs far less than university education in the US. There's a reason for that - unlike students with easy access to debt, the government won't pay such exorbitant fees.
[1] A very rough stab at an idea for making universities have skin in the game: make tuition for degrees conferred refundable by some percentage (50%?) if more than a certain fraction (10%?) of graduates with B- or higher GPA in their majors are collectively unable to find a job in their field within 2 years of graduation. If a university needed to withhold that guarantee for some majors, that would be a very helpful signal for prospective students.
But the point isn't the specifics, it's that just the presence of such a lever (and its absence at some universities or majors) would be a powerful signal to prospective students, better align the university's incentives, and cause a lot of necessary changes.
Most universities do not have "hedge fund" class endowments.
It should also be noted that there are reasons tuition is the way it is. State allocations for higher ed were slashed in 2008, and didn't really get put back even when the economy was doing well. Similarly, federal research dollars (which fund the vast bulk of research, not tuition) has been pretty flat for decades (the amount of a non-modular NIH R01, for example, hasn't changed since the Clinton administration).
Tuition is the only lever left to most institutions.
> Tuition is the only lever left to most institutions.
No, cutting costs (especially slashing the administration and facility budget) is another lever that few institutions use. The other really important levers are professor hiring and pay, and admissions standards.
Build a reputation for hiring a great faculty, paying them well, keeping a minimal administration, and cultivating a student body that is hungry to learn, and the right people will come. Everything else is mostly fluff with regard to a quality education.
Have a look at the average admin headcount per student in 1995 vs 2025. It has grown to be the largest department by far of modern US universities (and a lot of places in Europe as well, unfortunately) - usually significantly larger and more well-paid than the faculty.
In one extreme example, I heard the ratio of student:admin is nearly 1:1. That is bonkers.
And no - administration employees don't need to justify their ongoing employment by constantly publishing new research in academic journals. For them, the gravy just keeps rolling in. Just keep increasing tuition, increasing the endowment fund (often through real estate deals and other hedge fund like activity), increasing donations, increasing their own budget, and threatening to cut research & academic department budgets.
Yes, academic and research departments have often had budget cuts. But expenditures per student are way up to pay academic administration salary.
(If I sound angry, it's because I am. MBA types have caused so much harm to these institutions.)
If: (a) students paid 1/10 of what they pay today[0], (b) all the on-campus expensive perks were ended (new buildings sold, etc.) and the administration headcount dropped to 1 per every 50 students, (c) tuition went directly to professors, research, and basic groundskeeping, (d) some kind of financial arrangement were put in place so universities had skin in the game with regard to the success of their graduates[0]
then I'm positive the academic system would become far more effective at educating students and preparing them for life, and there would be a positive trickle-down effect to scientific research and the politics there.
[0] State-funded secondary education in European countries costs far less than university education in the US. There's a reason for that - unlike students with easy access to debt, the government won't pay such exorbitant fees.
[1] A very rough stab at an idea for making universities have skin in the game: make tuition for degrees conferred refundable by some percentage (50%?) if more than a certain fraction (10%?) of graduates with B- or higher GPA in their majors are collectively unable to find a job in their field within 2 years of graduation. If a university needed to withhold that guarantee for some majors, that would be a very helpful signal for prospective students.
But the point isn't the specifics, it's that just the presence of such a lever (and its absence at some universities or majors) would be a powerful signal to prospective students, better align the university's incentives, and cause a lot of necessary changes.