[jrochkind1]

I was being somewhat sarcastic, but I'd suggest that students and professors get some self-interested benefit from the system, or it wouldn't have come to exist.

The schools get to make it look like they are producing high-quality students with publications, without the professors actually having to do much work to make this true.

The students get to graduate, and get a publication credit, regardless of the quality of their work, so long as they can pay.

[fat0wl]

heh i know u were. i get what youre saying here but my issue with that is it just leads to like watered-down pseudo-journals of questionable reputation.

it almost feels like a better alternative would be for the students to run their own informal conferences & publish through an open publishing network (a lot of these are emerging in academia to subvert all the licensing BS from the journals)