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Thanks for answering. I’d suggest that cynicism does seem warranted after the past few years.
Someone downthread suggested that there’s not a lot of difference between the superstar researcher and the median researcher. I really have no way to know if this is true or not. Your response talks about all the benefits of university research. I’m not suggesting that there is zero benefit to university research. I’m just highly skeptical that the marginal benefit of this spousal hire policy is realy worth the cost. Of course academics will defend the policy. From the outside though, it sounds like bullshit.
I don't totally disagree with you. As I said, I think academia produces a lot of things of zero, or even negative, value and a lot of humanities research doesn't impress me much. I'm also pretty open to arguments that as a society we invest too much in academia or that academia should be greatly reorganized to be more cost-effective. I could even understand someone who believes that the net benefits of academic research are not worth the cost (though I disagree). But the view you seemed to express above, that superstar researchers don't produce any deliverables and that academia produces nothing of value, seems clearly wrong to me. My experience has been that in science and engineering, superstar researchers generally do have impressive achievements (though this is not quite the same thing as claiming that their achievements are worth the amount of money spent on them; I believe that too, but it's a different claim).
As I said in my original post, I personally am ambivalent about spousal hiring.
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