WHAT IS THE SOUND OF ATLAS, SHRUGGING? Bruce Heiden, writing for the National Association of Scholars, notes that faculty working conditions matter.

The notion that tenure is a costly luxury that professors have imposed on universities, and that administrators need flexibility to “quickly reallocate resources,” completely overlooks the kind of resource university faculty members are and the cost of producing them. The AAUP’s academic freedom argument also distracts attention from this important aspect of faculty work and compensation. Professors do not grow on trees, and university administrators—let’s call them bureaucrats—cannot quickly respond to ephemeral needs by shaking one tree instead of another, because the trees are not there to shake.

Professors are not an abundant natural resource, nor are they a mass produced commodity whose supply can be easily adjusted to meet the market demand at a given time. They are produced by investors who strive to make rational economic decisions and manage costs just as university bureaucrats do. If the producers of university faculty members don’t foresee an adequate return, they’ll invest their resources in producing something else. University bureaucrats won’t be able to “quickly reallocate resources” when producers don’t have the capacity to fill their orders for the equipment.

It takes a while for this dynamic to work, particularly in disciplines where the producers of professors consider themselves above the market, but work it will.

As universities degrade the condition of faculty work—its independence, security, and respect—they are degrading the career and diminishing its attractiveness to producers.

Indeed. It takes a long time, however, and a lot of frustrating trips to the job meetings, to get the message to headquarters that its idea of an adequate pay package and a commensurate job description is flawed.

In many fields the supply of high quality faculty has already shrunk. The only reason this isn’t remarked upon more widely is that quality in higher education is defined downwards, just as it is in other bureaucratized enterprises.

The cost of professors only seems high now because years ago capable young people who could have done many other things were attracted to academic careers. University bureaucrats and half-cocked economists don’t have to compute the cost of luring a professional from another field to spend ten years or more becoming a researcher and teacher in an academic discipline. If short-sighted efficiencies discourage production and interrupt the supply, will these experts explain the cost of hiring a faculty member who doesn’t exist?

Amen. Go read and understand. And note: a smaller pool of potential faculty is likely to be a pool less interested in implementing the latest administrative fads that detract from serious teaching and scholarship.