I’m really not sure how many more Literature papers we need on Proust, Shakespeare, Beowulf, and on and on. They have to continue to pump out papers and books, exclusively read by other people in the same subjects. “Invaluable” this is not
How much money do you think the Lord of the Rings, as the modern multimedia francise it is, makes? Do you think Tolkien, the first time he cracked open an Old English tome of Beowulf thought to himself, "someday, being a Beowulf scholar will lead to me creating a vast amount of money for Warner Bros."?
Academic outcomes are nonlinear. Outside of the job-training-ified fields like engineering, there is seldom a direct "I studied X and then made a ton of money doing exactly that". The success stories, like Tolkien, are more like, "I studied X, then I lost a finger in the great war, then I typed up a manuscript of a children's fairy tale, fast forward 100 years and it's worth untold millions." It is a winding road. All that is gold does not glitter, not all who wander are lost.
I would transfer these people into making podcasts, self-published books, social media feeds, and other forms of content that are actually consumed. Trying to read one of these papers in an academic journal is mind numbing. The college model is way too expensive and has very little societal value vs. its cost
Academic papers aren't for mass consumption. You can't replace the depth of consideration and knowledge needed to write an academic paper with hosting a podcast or self-publishing a book. Writing for an audience of leading experts is inherently different from writing for consumption by non-experts.
And you can't just equate societal value with "how many people consume it". An academic paper is often as valuable as a tool for crystalizing thoughts in the mind of the author as it is a tool for communicating to the reader.
I kind of feel like you are missing the point of academia.
You haven't actually measured the societal value because you can't. You might mean economic value, but you haven't measured that either.
Regardless, what makes money and what's good for society are orthogonal, and sometimes outright at odds with each other. Certainly, it's easier to make money via evil than make money via good. And, certainly, economy is flexible - it can be anything. We can have a strong economy making trains, if we want. "Free market" capitalism is not the sole economic system nor is it the most efficient. It seems China has a much more efficient economic system.
I argue higher education is good for society, even if it doesn't make money. Critical thinking is vital in decision making, and the humanities have a bigger emphasis on critical thinking (yes, really). Software engineering is "hard", but not really. Literary analysis is a different beast which requires a different kind of intelligence, one that is lacking in STEM.
You seem completely unable to examine production in a more abstract or higher-level sense.
You cannot go to point Z without first going through A-Y. You cannot write legislation, make movies, make music, or do just about anything outside of engineering without first understanding literary analysis. Context, themes, critical thinking, taking an idea and making it into a thing that conveys that idea - that is what the humanities is.
It easy for me to say "learning about Shakespeare is useless!" But if we did not, would those highschool kids be able to read legislation? Would they even be interested in doing so?
The same principal applies. Much of schooling is "useless", as in on it's own it does not produce value. But it is a stepping stone to things that DO produce value.
You learned your times tables so you can pass Calculus 2, which you never use, so now you can be a software engineer. And you got there by problem solving, not by learning to code. You remove a piece from the Jenga tower and it crumbles.
People often misunderstand what they do or what things are for. Literary analysis is not for understanding what Proust is saying. No. Literary analysis is for understanding what EVERYONE is saying. Higher education is not for a job, for a degree, or for graduation. It is for learning to learn. If you don't know how to learn you are no better than a tree or a dog.
My point is we have the major corpus of research for these topics already. The societal value - rich discussion, learning, critical thinking - can be accomplished solo or in a group setting with a solid teacher. We don’t need to fund 6 figure salaries for an army of tenured faculty to produce more journal articles on these subjects
> not sure how many more Literature papers we need on Proust, Shakespeare, Beowulf, and on and on
You generally want a few scholars on low burn keeping the knowledge alive and contemporary. The idea that something can be studied in totality and then put away safely across generations is farce.
But, as you mentioned, you only need a few. The problem is that universities have been expanded from something only for the elite to something for half the population, but they have replicated the structure they had back when they were for the elite. So now we end up with 20x the number of these scholars that we actually need.
First, you seem to be addressing the weakest form of their argument, not the strongest. It's reasonable to understand that some disciplines become obsolete or outdated.
Second, you framed your point as a rhetorical question with an obvious answer. At best, it waste people's time on a low latency communication platform, at worst, it is condescending and a common from of trolling.
In my experience, effective communication means addressing the strongest interpretation of what they're saying, and cutting to the chase by bringing your strongest most relevant points.
I think we are at the point where Patreon & podcasts can keep the best researchers self-funded and working on these niche subjects full time, creating content that is actually consumed rather than stored as dense, esoteric, unintelligible nonsense locked into pay-for academic journals. The college model is wildly expensive and devoid of societal value
> where Patreon & podcasts can keep the best researchers self-funded and working on these niche subjects full time
This is how you turn your society’s intellectual storehouses into propaganda. Lost to the West, about how Byzantine scholars preserved Roman knowledge through to the Enlightenment, is worth picking up.
> I think we are at the point where Patreon & podcasts can keep the best researchers self-funded...
What I believe you are saying is that the "popular" researchers will get ad-spend to fund their "research" that won't be peer reviewed. Why even bother publishing research, if no one reads anymore? It would just devolve into a popularity contest and following trends. Those trends will just be co-opted by monied interests.
The esoterism is due to the fact that there is a body of research that you need to know to understand the new research. Just because you can't understand the topic in a short sound bite does not mean it is not worth researching. Not all of the research is intended to be consumed by a lay public either.
Many podcasts and Patreon exclusives are behind paywalls and there is no expectation of peer-review.
In regards to calling this a "college model", not all research is done at college there is also thinktanks (institutions) and industry research which are funded by governments as well.
I think governments should be accountable for making sure the research is rigorous, has a social benefit, and is publicly available.
You are quite correct that Substack will favor the popular, not the best. But universities will favor what is popular too. Just popular with the different audience who controls university budgets instead of the general public. And how can governments do any better? The way they are held accountable is an election, or in other words a popularity contest.
I don't see why my tax dollars need to fund Proust studies, nor Elvis and Hip Hop researchers for that matter. It's all for elites to feel like they are doing something useful, "research", that no one would ever voluntarily fund otherwise. Or if they would, they should find a way to get paid voluntarily.
I think that is a pretty wild take. I get that people question the social value of esoteric academic research, but do you really think it is fungible with entertainment research?
They are producing something that no one reads with zero impact. It is funded by undergraduate lectures and subsidies from other parts of the university and taxpayers at large.
They could instead produce lectures for society - "podcasts" - and continue their mind-numbing paper writing, if that's truly what they want to do all day (hint: no they don't).
A few papers are interesting to read. However I don't have time to read all the papers on even on of the above, much less all. Thus the original point that these things are valuable to society in small numbers but not in larger numbers - except as job training of some sort.
