There's more to it. You're right that this is a part of the problem. The collapse of academia, of which professors have been by and large victims, is a rather

There's more to it. You're right that this is a part of the problem. The collapse of academia, of which professors have been by and large victims, is a rather revolting phenomenon, but professors share some segment of the blame. At some point, many professors developed the attitude that research is their real work, and that teaching is commodity labor that can be passed off to semiskilled TAs, never mind that there's a vast discrepancy between the effectiveness of a good teacher vs. that of a mediocre one. Physics professors can get away with this attitude, since physics research is extremely important; without it, there would be nothing to teach. And there are some brilliant researchers who are terrible teachers, and they're valued contributors to the academic mission. Literature professors can't get away with this. First of all, literature would still exist if there were no "researchers". Second, the entire purpose of their existence is the transmission of culture from one generation to the next, e.g. teaching. The bureaucrats in charge of the universities have come to agree with (some) leading research professors that research is the real work of an academic, and the work by which one professor can be distinguished from another, and that teaching is secondary, replaceable grunt work. The humanities academics have been royally screwed by this attitude.