The academic experience, for all its shortcomings, is one of novelty. These persons in the supposed ivory tower investigate in order to reveal. A principle goal is to find something that no-one has discovered. One brings it to light and makes it known to all. One then receives credit for the revelation, as if they have participated in Martin's being. When the administrative effort to "save" a university from coming demographics demands that the most popular of topics be the only ones to survive, the impetus of academia decays. What is most valuable in the act of research becomes subordinated to the educational widget-making of the business mentality and to the whims of children who barely understand what they wish and what it is they understand - dissimilar to those who have studied so long who have only come to realize that they do not know. It seems proper to save a discipline by making popular classes the greatest part of offerings, but the chairs who participate in this mentality are often, not always, co-opted. They are manufacturing a factory.
And it is my friend who conceals what the academic reveals. That opening to something new is a sundering of what is old.