Doesn't this mean that the universities are in bed with the publishers which creates a closed loop around the scientific community and graduate students?
How can knowledge expect to flourish if the universities dictate where the papers go for maximal prestige and the publishers paywall the papers for maximal profit?
The universities are complicit in it, but as an individual, you have the option of making a protest after working hard to do the research itself, by not passing your thesis defense or getting tenure, and having a very small impact on publishing practices or you have the option of being complicit in it.
Over time, this can change, but right now the costs are very high to protest and the chance of it changing minds is very low.
I wonder if a possible solution to this problem would be getting universities to require publication to open access journals as opposed to closed ones. Then journals with paywalls would have an incentive to offer open access options in order to keep the largest amount of papers.
Research papers funded by US Government agencies that spend more than $100M on R&D requires that the papers be made publicly available within 1 year after publication. Unfortunately, this does not apply to works published before 2013. NIH has had this policy in place for longer, but it still doesn't go back far enough.
How can knowledge expect to flourish if the universities dictate where the papers go for maximal prestige and the publishers paywall the papers for maximal profit?