The Decommodification of Academic Thought

Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineburg leave us with a somewhat calming line in the final section of Verified. The authors, when speaking about the emergence of LLM technology, state that “they just know the sort of things people say about the subject, whether they’re true or not” (220). In some sense, the authors are right to point out that systems such as ChatGPT are doomed to be repetitive. After all, the best that these systems can do is regurgitate information. They rely on people for novel contributions. And, as the authors point out, people contribute quite a bit of nonsense regarding topics they don’t know anything about. On page 220, the authors state that these systems “are only as reliable as the information they’re fed.” This last point is exactly what worries me.

Look who’s talking. I mean it, look around. Who’s talking? On the internet, we have a range of “independent” “journalists, actual independent journalists, propaganda accounts, rage baiters, and armchair experts. The information age has allowed more access to information than ever before, yet that capability is hosting an ocean of uninformed opinions and intentional disinformation. Think about this: the most accessible content platforms really give access to an odd mixture of meaningless drivel that helps us do nothing but kill time. In other words, the information being fed to LLMs contains a lot of nonsense.

Now, before you object, I am keenly aware of people who use social media platforms for legitimate educational purposes. I am fully aware of the fact that people use these platforms to inform other people with verified information. However, it seems clear that these efforts are a minority of the content produced online. Overall, I am trying to illustrate that the largest conversation going on in the world is often not a quality one. But that doesn’t mean that quality conversations don’t exist. They do, but they’re usually inaccessible.

Plenty of communication is going on in the world of academia. There is certainly no shortage of wonderful people doing amazing academic research work throughout the country. The problem is that these conversations pool in academia and don’t really make it out anywhere else. Many of the latest and greatest findings in academic research are stuck in databases behind paywalls. A lot of academic work is being published in a manner that requires some institutional support to access. On top of that, you need the right institution. I cannot tell you how many times I have to replace a potential source because MTSU doesn’t have access to a particular database.

To nobody’s surprise, there’s often options to purchase database access for exorbitant costs. The other option is to purchase access to a paper for hundreds of dollars. So, not only are these examples inaccessible due to having institutional support, but they’re financially inaccessible for most people. Textbooks are not much different. Like any other commodity, a textbook needs to justify a certain profit margin prior to it being a valuable resource. As such, we see textbook costs rise into the range of several hundreds of dollars. There is a clear problem when renting information becomes a normalized practice.

Suppose we gain access to the educational materials. We immediately run into the obscurity issue. The obscurity issue is the language barrier that sits between a potential learner and the material to be learned. Fundamentally, you need to enter into some course or class that instructs you through the material. A degree of difficult terminology is absolutely necessary for many fields, but ambiguous language has been used maliciously, especially in fields like philosophy.

This list of grievances certainly is not exhaustive. However, they help me illustrate my next point: people have to choose between accessing academic information themselves or through other means.

Those small corners of content platforms that host educational materials are important because they provide access to the inaccessible. Watching a YouTuber who has a degree in philosophy explain something to you is simply more accessible than involving oneself in academia. The idealist in all of us knows that going to university is a higher quality experience, but the realist in us knows that people do not have the time or money to go. At a minimum, getting an education will cost someone tens of thousands of dollars and dozens of hours a week. The working class simply doesn’t have either to spare.

Academia, at least here in the United States, is a business. Publications need to bring profit. Admitting students must bring profit. Providing information to anyone who wants it will not happen unless it promises profit. The inaccessibility of academic thought is not a mistake; rather, it’s the business model of academia. And we should not place this charge on the researchers themselves. M.A. students doing research and working on new literature usually pay to do so. Ph.D. students live on poverty wages or less, sometimes resorting to utilizing food stamps to eat. Professors are paid but often don’t receive enough compared to the relevant cost of living, nor do they have the prospect of tenure.

The issue is not the professor or the student. The issue is the university as a business entity. The issue is the publisher as a business entity. The issue is that the means of access and distribution of intellectual pursuits are owned by entities that do not generate the product of intellectual pursuit. What utility is there in ensuring that accessing academic thought and conversation is difficult for most people other than profit? What social good does it accomplish to disincentivize capable minds from pursuing education by loans, tuition, and materials costs?

The inaccessible nature of academic work has put people in a position where they seek out what people say about a topic.

They cannot access the novel material in the topic, nor is there a formulation of that material that makes rhetorical assessments of a more general audience. As such, the only thing a person can do is find what people say about something, and since the things being said in academia are confined to academia, we see the emergence of those who know nothing about the topic as the only choice left in many cases.

People do not gravitate towards pseudointellectuals because they are stupid. They gravitate towards them because pseudointellectuals are the only ones pulling them.

I do not wish to diminish the work that academics do. In fact, I have nothing but respect for it. As I stated, I believe the issue lies in the institutions themselves. Academic work is being manipulated as any other commodity is. Academic work is made artificially scarce, yet the effects of this artificial scarcity are worse than other commodities. Scarcity in non-necessary products breeds frustration, but scarcity in knowledge breeds ignorance and sheer nihilism. Many people have the capacity to pursue intellectual growth, yet so many are deprived of it.

We do not need a population that doesn’t seek out what people say about something. On the contrary, we need better somethings to be said.

If we wish to avoid a world of disinformation and ignorance, if we want to avoid wasted potential in society, if we want the predatory capabilities of LLMs to be rendered useless, we must de-commodify academic thought. No longer should authors be silenced under the ransom of profit, and no longer should we reduce the value of knowledge. Not only does the privatization of education and research need to end, but there must be concerted effort to reevaluate the rhetorical situation between academia and the uneducated population.

Education, both in practice and prose, must become a right.