[foldr]

> If you want to run universities as some type of public good, then good luck. Pay everybody the same and offer as many degrees as you'd like. Good luck hiring competent people...

This is quite a bizarre statement, since universities have been run as a public good for centuries. The idea that they should be profitable businesses is relatively recent. I doubt that the classicists at Magdalen college have ever turned a profit over the centuries, but that doesn't mean that they had trouble recruiting competent people.

[cyrksoft]

You are using one Oxford college as an example, that is not representative at all. Most universities have very little (if not null) prestige associated to them. If you will only recruit top talent at Oxford and Cambridge, why have the rest of the universities? How do you plan on funding them?

[foldr]

Again, your rhetorical questions are straightforwardly answered by history. Humanities departments have survived for centuries at relatively non-prestigious institutions. It is clearly possible for societies to fund such things if there is the social and political will to do so. It may be that there is not, at present. Nonetheless, it is a vast oversimplification to suggest that recruiting talented academics in the humanities is essentially impossible merely because humanities departments are not profitable businesses. You might as well say that a country can't have armed forces because the soldiers don't turn in a profit.

[cyrksoft]

My questions are not rhetorical, so you could answer them. Money has to come from somewhere. If your answer is subsidies, then decide either to increase taxation or to cut funding to something else. I believe it is wrong to force people to subsidies academics producing nothing. You cannot tell me that a History PhD studying the life of a 15th century Pope provides much value to society.

That things worked in a certain way for centuries means nothing. Humanities academics are easy to hire, they are many, many PhD graduates, and very few open positions. Also, they make more money in academia than they make in industry. With not money outside options, it is easy to fill those roles.

I'm not suggesting cutting all funding, I think they do provide value in society. However, they shouldn't be demanding salaries that they cannot produce themselves. The fact that Business School professors (as an example, the same could be said by CS professors) make a lot more, doesn't mean that Humanities professor should make the same.

Also, having governments fund most of their budget has many risks. It is very hard for it not to become political and a tool for those in power.

[foldr]

I absolutely can tell you that a History PhD studying the life of a 15th century Pope provides value to society. The value of such work has been recognised for centuries.

Lots of people demand 'salaries that they cannot produce themselves'. For example, soldiers, nurses, firefighters, etc. etc. I'm not sure why you have it in for academics specifically.

Universities in the UK and many other countries have been heavily subsidised by governments for a long time. In general this does not seem to result in universities becoming a tool for those in power. Quite the opposite in many cases.

[cyrksoft]

Which value and recognition are you talking about? Their papers are almost never cited [0].

Soldiers, and defense in general, are part of the main things a government should provide (we can discuss how much, but that is another discussion).

I am not sure why you say nurses cannot produce salaries. Nurses work in the private sector and provide substantial value.

I do not have it in for academics specifically. In fact, I used to be one. What I am saying is that they are mostly disposable and think of themselves as some superior value.

In the UK in particular, education used to be tuition-free. Now they are running more as a business. I do not see the point of forcing subsidies on people who produce something that not even other academics are interested in. You are basically paying people to sit in a room and discuss something by themselves. Why does a minimum wage worker have to subsidies that? We are all getting hit by inflation, some more than others. Academia is a job with zero risk involved. I don't think it is fair to keep subsidising the dream of a few while having so many better uses for the money, or even reducing the tax burden on society.

[0] https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/04/23/ac...

[foldr]

Number of papers published or number of citations isn't a measure of the value of someone's research. This over-reliance on metrics is a big part of what's going wrong with academia. A hundred years ago people published when they had something to say, and authors of journals had to literally beg people for submissions.

>Soldiers, and defense in general, are part of the main things a government should provide

So is education. All developed countries spend public money on education.

>In the UK in particular, education used to be tuition-free.

That is my point. There are abundant historical examples of how a thriving university sector can be maintained without each department needing to be run as its own business.

>You are basically paying people to sit in a room and discuss something by themselves. Why does a minimum wage worker have to subsidies that?

In the UK? In the UK a minimum wage worker pays hardly any tax, so they don't subsidise much of anything. If the question is why society should subsidise that, my answer would be that it should do so if it values historical knowledge (assuming that we're still talking about history PhDs). If you are just saying "history sucks, so let's not spend money training people to be historians", then sure, that is a coherent position.