From a researcher's perspective, it's also absurd. The last time I got external funding I was "paying" more than my salary in overheads. Yet: I did not always have a working space, my PC sucked so I used my own, the library could not afford my books. I literally didn't even *need* the university.

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And this, or this is my guess, will eventually (via populist politics) lead to severe institutional challenges. Fortunately, "collapse" doesn't necessarily mean destruction, but rather a rapid simplification. And frankly, academia could benefit from such simplification. But it will be turbulent.

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I think we are nearing this point, to be frank. In Finland, the public is already questioning why we give €1 million to someone studying literature. What they don't understand is, of course, that this mostly goes to overheads. But it does radically decrease public willingness to pay.

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What happens next in Tainter's textbook examples – yes, this is debated and not a law of nature – is that eventually, the marginal costs of maintaining high complexity exceed the marginal benefits, leading to rapid institutional decay and collapse.

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Now, this complexity faces diminishing marginal returns. Simply, the bureaucracy leaves little time for the university's core functions: research and teaching. When is the last time you, an academic, could sit uninterrupted for a day to *just do science* as it's supposed to be done? (Me: February.)

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