They're academics. The job is to say things that are true inosfar as a community of experts driven by rigorous argument believes.

Whether or not that has any effect on the real world is not their concern. The academy is proud of their record of interest in things that have no applications whatsoever in the real world and ideas that turn out to be extremely harmful if applied. The people pretending that academia is some sort of vocational system were wrong and are to blame for the academics doing exactly what they were expected to do.

Although yes to the idea that taxpayers shouldn't have to fund running everyone through university. The academics are often opposed to the taxpayers, it isn't fair to make the taxpayers fund them.