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
