I agree overall with what you wrote, but have to comment here, because I think this is already not the case in many settings. I can only speak for the US, but in my experience with some other places overseas similar issues are developing.
There are many legitimate hypotheses for why this is the case, but in general at many universities, as far as climbing the academic ladder is concerned, publication metrics are no longer relevant. That is, some baseline is required, but beyond that, most of the focus is on money and grant sizes. I've been in promotion meetings discussing junior faculty that are not publishing and this is brushed aside because they have large grants. I've also repeatedly heard sentiments to the effect of "papers are a dime a dozen, grant dollars distinguish good from bad research."
Again, there's lots of reasonable opinions about this, but I've come to a place where I've decided this is incentivizing corruption. Good research is only weakly correlated with its grant reimbursement, and regardless, it's lead to a focus on something only weakly associated with research quality. Discussions with university staff where you're openly pressured to artificially inflate costs to bring in more indirect funds should raise questions. Just as it's apparent that incentivizing (relatively) superficial bibliometric indices like publication count or h factors leads to superficial science, incentivizing research through grant money has the same effect, but differently.
So yes, going into academics is not the way to make money if that's what you want. However, I think nowadays in the US, it's very much all about the money for large segments, who are milking the system right now at this moment.
Also, in theory, yes, management is the solution, but really management is how we've gotten into this mess. Good management, yes, bad management no. But how do you insure the former?
Fixing this mess academics has slid down (in my perception, maybe everything really is fine) will require a lot of changes that will be controversial and painful to many, and I don't think there's a single magic bullet cure. Eliminating indirect funds is probably one thing, funding research through different mechanisms is another, maybe lotteries, probably opening up grant review processes to the general public. Maybe dissociating scientific research from the university system even more so than has been the case is also necessary. Maybe incentivizing a change in university administration structures. Probably all of the above, plus a lot else.
How to get things to go well again is achievable in theory but how to get there is less clear given the amount of change involved.
I agree overall with what you wrote, but have to comment here, because I think this is already not the case in many settings. I can only speak for the US, but in my experience with some other places overseas similar issues are developing.
There are many legitimate hypotheses for why this is the case, but in general at many universities, as far as climbing the academic ladder is concerned, publication metrics are no longer relevant. That is, some baseline is required, but beyond that, most of the focus is on money and grant sizes. I've been in promotion meetings discussing junior faculty that are not publishing and this is brushed aside because they have large grants. I've also repeatedly heard sentiments to the effect of "papers are a dime a dozen, grant dollars distinguish good from bad research."
Again, there's lots of reasonable opinions about this, but I've come to a place where I've decided this is incentivizing corruption. Good research is only weakly correlated with its grant reimbursement, and regardless, it's lead to a focus on something only weakly associated with research quality. Discussions with university staff where you're openly pressured to artificially inflate costs to bring in more indirect funds should raise questions. Just as it's apparent that incentivizing (relatively) superficial bibliometric indices like publication count or h factors leads to superficial science, incentivizing research through grant money has the same effect, but differently.
So yes, going into academics is not the way to make money if that's what you want. However, I think nowadays in the US, it's very much all about the money for large segments, who are milking the system right now at this moment.
Also, in theory, yes, management is the solution, but really management is how we've gotten into this mess. Good management, yes, bad management no. But how do you insure the former?
Fixing this mess academics has slid down (in my perception, maybe everything really is fine) will require a lot of changes that will be controversial and painful to many, and I don't think there's a single magic bullet cure. Eliminating indirect funds is probably one thing, funding research through different mechanisms is another, maybe lotteries, probably opening up grant review processes to the general public. Maybe dissociating scientific research from the university system even more so than has been the case is also necessary. Maybe incentivizing a change in university administration structures. Probably all of the above, plus a lot else.
How to get things to go well again is achievable in theory but how to get there is less clear given the amount of change involved.