[danaris]

Describing it as "overproduction of academics" is kind of begging the question, though: is it not at least as much "deprioritization of basic research and education"?

It's not like the current demand for scientists is somehow a completely natural value, arrived at objectively and with no human biases involved.

And the private sector is heavily to blame for that. In ways that you even describe, as well as others (as another commenter noted, regulatory capture is one).

[amirhirsch]

Peter Turchin’s theory of “elite overproduction” suggests this is a cause for social instability and revolutions