Unfortunately, you're not wrong. Since a long time, I'm convinced universities need to scale down, and quite a lot too. Higher education, as far as it's needed,

Unfortunately, you're not wrong. Since a long time, I'm convinced universities need to scale down, and quite a lot too. Higher education, as far as it's needed, should be relegated to schools without a research function. Universities should be primarily research facilities, only training those students who can become good researchers. That doesn't solve the publication treadmill, but it would expect it to be a step forward.