[AmishDude]

Academics will not judge on merit. Trust me, they sway to fashions and trends at the slightest breeze. I see this in mathematics. For a while, biomathematics was the hot thing. It's crap. Now it's Industrial Applied Mathematics, which is supposed to be mathematics without proofs, which is basically just engineering for people who are actually smart.

You assume that there's an objective standard in academics and there is not. And if there is, it will not be followed by academicians, your proposal would simply lead to left-wing academics declaring to be "productive" other left-wing academics.

[FreeKeys]

What are you, a bureaucrat? You're not thinking "outside the box." I don't care if it takes 50 years. It's time to plot the scrapping of the whole damn system and replacing it with a different one. Plans have to be made to do it one step at a time.