Now, my alma mater pays high-tooting faculty nearly a megabuck, pays typical faculty $180k, has $200 million building projects, yachts, and what-not. Tuition went up multifold too.
I'm more than happy to pay a bunch of nerds $60k per year to have lifetime jobs to sit around and nerd, but if my taxpayer dollars are paying for that monstrosity, it better darned well deliver economic value too.
(Additionally I don’t know if it applies here, but often that money to build buildings is with conditions- ie.”you have to use this money to build a building a name it after me”.)
You don't have a string of low-paid abusive post-docs, research scientist positions, and what not. And assistant prof'ing is fun, not publish-or-perish and grant writing; you do research and write (papers, not massive numbers of grant applications). Unless you mess up, you make tenure.
The flip side is you get paid a third of industry.
That pretty much describes academia when my advisor got a job.
As you pointed out, $60k bring competition down a lot. At that point, you're no longer competing with hedge funds and FAANG. And it brings job supply up; if you pay $60k, at current funding rates, you'll have no shortage of jobs.
With that sane system, which we DID once have, lots of people factually DID take that path. The calculus isn't hard:
1) Hate my life 40 hours per week at FAANG/hedge fund/etc. so I can afford to do what I love
2) Drive a beat-up old subcompact and spend 80 hours per week doing what I love with a guaranteed (low-paying, stable) job for the rest of my life.
It's not rocket science. Lots of people pick #2. I don't much care if I have $200/plate food, a mansion, business class flights, and a sports car. I'm okay with McD's salads, cooking, camping trips, and a bicycle (I DO care about financial stress -- risk of losing a mortgage -- but stability takes that away). Splitting time between intellectual pursuits and family? That's awesome. Doing it in a community of like-minded people? Even more so. Lots of people made that same choice before elite academia became big $$$, and my math friends who bring in $1 million/year at hedge funds did so because they couldn't find academic jobs.
Think of it this way: You know that nerd who spends their days building Lego sets? There are plenty of nerds who want to code up open source, explore the secrets of physics, doing theoretical math, or working out new models for government. All you need to do is provide stability and room to focus. If you give tenured positions which cover basic housing, food, and clothing, and give a sane process to get there, you'll have no shortage of candidates.
And now the German version of this tale:
You finish high school with 18/19 get your master's degree with 23/24. Then you get a PhD position but because it's tied to a three-year project with third-party funding, you're also expected to do project work that does not contribute to your thesis at all. You're only starting out in the business, though, so you're happy to help!
Then, three years later, the project is finished but your thesis is nowhere near that. Now, choose your own adventure:
1) Luckily, your supervisor can hire you using his own budget. That's nice, almost no strings attached. Now you can really focus on finishing up your thesis.
2) Luckily, there's another project that has just started and that you can work on now. You're a bit unsure, though: when the first project was up, no-one thanked you for your work, your supervisor was just surprised about the state of your thesis. Should you do that again? What's more, the new project has nothing to do with the old project, let alone with the topic of your thesis. Because you really have no other option, you agree to do it - still better than nothing.
Which brings us to the next option:
3) Your supervisor unfortunately has no funds to extend your contract. But since you've already invested so much work and you like the idea of a PhD, you apply for unemployment support through the government and hope that you can finish everything within a year. Later, you're gonna call this period an "independently funded research scholarship" on you CV.
But all good things come to an end: finally, after much hardship, you graduate! Wow!
And you even find a post-doc position in some other town! Great. You don't mind a change of scenery! Now you're rolling!
And you're good at your job. You feel good. Get lots of papers accepted.
But your contract ends after two years. Luckily, there is another post-doc position in some other town! Great! You're not so keen on moving again but hey, your new partner doesn't mind a change of scenery.
And you're still pretty good at your job. You kind of start feeling a bit disillusioned with your field though: it seems like all the research published these days is just application-driven -- not what once pulled you to the field. Oh, well, at least your job pays the rent.
But your contract ends after two years. You consider applying for professor positions because in Germany, there is no middle ground really. But you have your doubts: are you really good enough? Besides, both you and your partner hate the idea of moving yet again: you just made new friends. But what can you do?
None of your applications for a professor position go anywhere. So you go for a third post-doc. The move was really not that bad, as you were able to sell most of the old furniture. The new supervisor is great and you feel energized with a rediscovered love for the field.
You don't get as many papers out as before even though you try. But somehow, you don't have as much time for actual research anymore, as you find yourself more and more tied up in administratrivia. You work long hours but only half of it is actually dedicated to research, and it shows in your output. Nevertheless, you like the working environment.
But then your contract ends after two years. Your supervisor would love to keep you, he even has enough money in his budget for at least five years. But oh! Damn. There is a law in Germany that six years after your PhD, you cannot be hired on university budget anymore, unless it's a permanent position. And, well, sorry, the bad news is: universities don't hire on permanent contracts. Faculty, that is, they don't hire faculty - except professors. Administration, sure, they're permanent. Facility management, sure, they're permanent. Just the people doing the core task of a university (teaching and researching), sorry, no.
You give a professor position one last try because there just happens to be an opening that sounds like it was just made for you. You fit it perfectly. And so do 9 others. But there's only one position. You're all pretty much equally qualified, so who's going to get it? Will it be you?
It doesn't matter because it's clear that nine folks will not get it.
Nine people who's dream it has always been to be in research, who have invested a lot in making this dream a reality, who are completely qualified and very experienced will now have to go and do something else... while a new generation of young, blue-eyed, PhD students are ready for the same journey.
I know a handful of faculty at top universities (MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, etc). At least one did a year at a FAANG company prior to starting so it isn't like they don't know better. They are paid well enough and don't need 400k salaries. They love their research topic and love the freedom to work on the topics they care most about. They love mentoring students specifically. They don't care about software engineering as a discipline and would rather spend time learning other things. They (most of them) like teaching. They like being part of a research community.
And most -- not all but most -- new faculty hires cheat in some way to get there, at the elites (at the very least, overselling results, but often intentionally p-hunting, stealing credit, and similar).
This is not relevant to the UK. Faculty do not get paid anywhere near this. They do not get paid lawyer or doctor money either, for the UK. Economics faculty who move from the UK to the US will come close to doubling their salary, as a lower bound.
