It's a shock because the university system is paid for by us, by our tuition and taxes. People pay high tuition to go to research universities and the societal bargain USED to be that those tuitions subsidized basic research which is available to society. Elsevier isn't contributing shit compared to us, yet they can apparently lock up publication with a really small amount of money compared to the rest of the uni system.
It is my understanding that tuition never funds research, except possibly in the sense that it pays some fraction of faculty salaries and buildings in which the faculty have offices. The actual research is funded by grants.
