To play the devil's advocate: We really, truly, desperately need academics. The human race would be very much worse off if there weren't a significant number of people spending their lives on purely intellectual pursuits in the name of curiosity instead of quarterly profits.
The problem is not the role of academics in the world, that's clearly very important.
The problem is the current economic situation of Universities and their relationship to post-docs. It's more akin to a pyramid scheme or a ponzi scheme than a valid career. The music hasn't quite stopped, but it's already fading, and the people that are paying attention are starting to cry foul.
I luckily escaped this death march, but I still keep up with Physics research, and I've noticed that the political structure of modern academia has caused fundamental research to stagnate. Risk is no longer rewarded. The tall poppy is the first to be cut. Small, incremental improvements are rewarded, big theoretical leaps are never approved for funding.
High energy particle physics in particular has completely stalled since the 1970s! Similarly, we still don't quite understand how high-temperature superconductors work. Fusion research has burnt a lot more money than helium. The efforts to marry GR and QM have produced a lot of papers, but no results.
Take a casual stroll through ArXiV, and you'll discover that 99% of the stuff that is published is a total waste of time. It's "diploma mill", "publish or perish" garbage. This means that sifting through the endless torrent of worthless papers for the occasional insightful one would be a full time job all by itself. This alone is sufficient to stall progress!
Scientists are no longer standing on each others' shoulders, they are now trampling each other in a mad scramble for funding and tenure.
I don't deny that the world needs people who can be dedicated to intellectual pursuits - but the stagnation you've described might be further proof that academia itself is the reason the job isn't getting done. There are hundreds of well-regarded universities in the world, many with massive private endowments - if just one of those universities could prove that they are capable of advancing valuable knowledge without falling into that publishing trap - why wouldn't they? All of these institutions claim to have education and knowledge discovery as missions, but all they seem to do is build up barriers in the name of elitism.
The world needs innovators, discoverers, creatives, and engineers - but why is a university structure required for someone to be acknowledged as such? The market's needs certainly can't drive every valuable intellectual discovery - but I don't think they preclude them. Government agencies (NASA, EPA) are also capable of doing research and publishing.
To be clear, I do think academia does serve a valuable role and is a good thing in general. I just think that it's grown too broad in scope - probably because of the massive availability of government grants and competition for those grants.
The problem is not the role of academics in the world, that's clearly very important.
The problem is the current economic situation of Universities and their relationship to post-docs. It's more akin to a pyramid scheme or a ponzi scheme than a valid career. The music hasn't quite stopped, but it's already fading, and the people that are paying attention are starting to cry foul.
I luckily escaped this death march, but I still keep up with Physics research, and I've noticed that the political structure of modern academia has caused fundamental research to stagnate. Risk is no longer rewarded. The tall poppy is the first to be cut. Small, incremental improvements are rewarded, big theoretical leaps are never approved for funding.
High energy particle physics in particular has completely stalled since the 1970s! Similarly, we still don't quite understand how high-temperature superconductors work. Fusion research has burnt a lot more money than helium. The efforts to marry GR and QM have produced a lot of papers, but no results.
Take a casual stroll through ArXiV, and you'll discover that 99% of the stuff that is published is a total waste of time. It's "diploma mill", "publish or perish" garbage. This means that sifting through the endless torrent of worthless papers for the occasional insightful one would be a full time job all by itself. This alone is sufficient to stall progress!
Scientists are no longer standing on each others' shoulders, they are now trampling each other in a mad scramble for funding and tenure.