“The fault with thinking of academia as a pyramid scheme is that there’s no one at the top — just the increasingly ambivalent structure, the ever-reproducing ba

“The fault with thinking of academia as a pyramid scheme is that there’s no one at the top — just the increasingly ambivalent structure, the ever-reproducing base. You could say administration profits, or football coaches profit. But it increasingly feels like a system in which no one wins: not the students, not their parents, not the graduate students, not professors facing increased belt-tightening, axing of departments, and continual fights for whatever meager resources remain.” This is a very naive statement from a dedicated academic who has written an otherwise great, and deserves-to-be-read article. Who benefits? Administrators and tenured professors, all effectively with lifetime positions, large guaranteed pensions. To duplicate the expected cashflows, here, for a mid-careered 50-year-old, requires capital of ca. $5M. THAT’s who benefits.