That is kind of not how academia works. Prestige is everything. If you don’t attract the best students, you get less citations. Infrastructure crumbling? That means less grants, and therefore less citations.

The worst part is that tenured professors don’t really feel the brunt of being in a shrinking department, because they are never personally at risk. They do lose prestige, but the last few are at the stage of their careers that it doesn’t matter enough.

Honestly it feels a lot more like the fall of (Western) Rome to me. A lot of people who don’t remember what we did to get this great system, and are slowly chipping it away for their own benefit until it finally collapses. Ridiculous amounts of infighting while the humanities are burning down. Both the woke crowd and the Trumpers united on how resolutely they stand against academic freedom.

Fall of the Western Roman Empire vibes everywhere in the west these days, outside maybe of tech. But even that depends on the infrastructure, human and physical, that the rest of the system provides so it’s just a matter of time.

I console myself by saying we’re just in the low part of Peter Turchin’s secular cycle - but I hope that’s true.