Before giving his own take, Robin Hanson gives the accepted story of academia’s function:
Academics get support from students, foundations, governments, media, and consulting clients. Yes academics mainly publish papers, books, lectures, etc.; the question is why academics are paid to do this. The standard idealistic answer is that academics know useful and important things, things which students want to learn, media want to report, consulting clients want to apply, and which foundations and governments want to promote the creation and spread of, for the good of the everyone.
He then pokes a few holes:
- College students prefer to be taught by profs who research, and hence ignore students more, yet students have little idea what their profs research. Students know and care a lot about their school’s general prestige, but know and care little about the research done there. There is relatively little relation between what profs teach, what profs research, and what students do after they graduate.
- Patrons of research similarly pay lots more attention the prestige of a researcher and his institution than to how much his research could plausibly benefit the world or uncover important deep truths. Prestige is set primarily by academic journals, who attend much more to whether a particular work was difficult and impressive while following standard methods than to its beneficial impact or deep insight.
- Citizens prefer to fund their nations to maintain impressive researchers, but have little idea what those researchers do. Citizens would rather that other nations did less research, so their nation can excel by comparison, and their funding preferences have little to do with the size of their nation relative to the world, or to the practical relevance of research topics. In fact, academic research contributes little to overall economic innovation and growth.
- Reporters seeking quotes care primarily about the prestige of a researcher and his institution, requiring only the loosest connection between his research specialty and the topic at hand. Engaging prestigious academics can become respected pundits on topics far from their research areas. Clients seeking consulting care a lot more about the prestige of the consultant than what he actually says. Corporation often fund basic research that gains them little other than connection with prestigious researchers.
People care primarily about affiliating with others who have been certified as prestigious.