Yes but why are scientists in the position of selling?

Why is that their position in whatever this negotiation is?

First I should explain I believe Science to be a special type of Education, and that by addressing the specific here on HN we are not attacking the general problem.

There is nothing complex about this subject. It is just bad governance leading to institutional weakness. Let us look at long term trends, since that is what ultimately matters.

In 1900 to a first approximation there existed 1000 physicsts on earth. A century later that number is larger by a factor of (at least) 1000x.

Yet I wouldn't claim physics has produced 10x the results, let alone 1000. This requires explanation.

I am not ganging up on physics, the problem is across all the sciences.

This means either of two possibles.

1. There exists diminishing returns even in the discovery of new ideas themselves. We should be seeing an explosion of new fields of science, for every 1 field in 1900 we should see 100 new ones today but we do not.

2. Science as an institution has gradually succumbed to some kind of rot from within.

I submit to you it looks like the first but is actually the second proposition which is the truth.

Now I will come clear. It is democracy that has accomplished this. This is because public money must be tethered to some kind of measurable outcome, an easily understood metric, for future flows of monetary assistance.

The causality goes like this.

Public finances must be justified in the development of Education and Science. Bureaucrats are in essence the farmers of students or scientists in a similar way to cash crops or Prussian forestry management. More units, more volume equal more success. Thus, the limits on the network of bureaucracy are artificial limits on the potential for growth.

Going 'wild' is not tolerated even if it would lead to more interesting outcomes (which is what we want!). It is seen as expensive when it is nothing of the sort.

The resultant output is the mass production of mediocrity.

The larger the apparatus, the more all encompassing it becomes until its standards and objectives become universal. Its gravity even influences the trajectory of systems outside of it e.g. privately funded research due to its incredible size (because those privately funded researchers were inoculated into conformity with a public system or a private system which a curriculum based on the public model).

All that I have said should be testable.

Suppose you have the following arrangement.

1. Students or Scientists with independent source of income. We may have a filter for motivation but that's about all.

2. Educational assistance which is funded through present and former students/scientists.

3. There does not exist a standardized curriculum or set of objectives. It is all blue sky. Any resultant consensus on common topic areas is by choice. Interdisciplinary activity would explode because the subjects are not focused on a 'path', which necessarily distorts and cuts down on the number of potential possibilities.

Then I am convinced you shall see a thousand flowers bloom.

Edit: The more 'elite' a university is, the more it resembles the arrangement I describe. It is undeniable that the best parts of the Educational system are the most aristocratic, while the worst are the most demotic.