Are universities run more and more like businesses? What are the consequences? I watched an episode of &quot;Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj&quot; called &quot;Is College Still Worth It?&quot;
In there the point was made, with ample evidence, that universities are increasingly resembling businesses with dire consequences for the professors. The amount of tenure-track professors is steadily declining while the amount of low-paid, adjunct professors, who are seemingly abused by the institution, is increasing.
I am a graduate student in mathematics and I am getting close to finishing my degree. It was always my dream and intention to go into academia and contribute original research to the fields I am interested in: Differential Geometry and Mathematical Physics.
After watching this episode and witnessing for myself what being in academia is like, I am actually considering other options. Now, my question is, how many other academics have seen and are upset by the way academia is going in terms of being run like a business? How are you handling it? Or do you think it's not really a big deal? Any advice for someone who wants to do pure math research for a living but doesn't want to be tied to a university? Or are my options rather limited?
As brought up in a comment, this show and my experience are referring to US universities but I am interested in hearing anyone's perspective on it. I can imagine similar situations might be faced by academics in other countries.
I would like to emphasize what I see as the important parts of this question. People are mainly addressing the title, which is only part of the story. How are you handling this situation? How is effecting your work/life? Are you okay with this, as a professor/instructor/person in academia?
Here is an article that nicely describes what I am talking about with a good amount of evidence. I am sure there are counter-viewpoints. I am posting this to clarify that I am not talking about universities simply covering their costs: https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/156375
I'm not going to answer your career questions, but just the title whether universities are run like businesses:
Over the past 20 years (with longer roots), universities have largely been stripped of the substantial state contributions that have financed operations before then. It used to be the fact that states funded the majority of university expenditures because (i) that provided an education for the young people of the state at a small cost, and (ii) the research done at universities translated into state-of-the-art knowledge in the state that led to highly educated students, start-up companies, companies that want to have offices in the state because they needed that knowledge, etc. In return for these state contributions, universities were run in a manner that had the welfare of the state as its top concern -- which includes a focus on education and research. Both provided great flexibility to faculty as long as they reasonably looked towards the bigger goals.
But states no longer provide that money for a variety of mostly political reasons: For example, my own university now receives less than 10% of its budget from the state of Colorado. This comes with consequences:

We rely on student tuition for much more substantial part of our revenue, and so keeping students happy is an important consideration (whether they deserve it or not).
We rely on out-of-state student tuition to a much larger degree because the out-of-state tuition rate is not subject to political pressure that universities are still subject to despite the fact that the state no longer provides a substantial part of the budget. To attract out-of-state students, they need to be treated like the customers of a business.
We rely on Federal and private research dollars much more than we used to. There is substantially greater pressure on faculty to bring in these research dollars than there used to be.

So when people say &quot;universities are run like businesses today&quot;, what they really mean in some sense is that there is greater pressure on paying attention to students (&quot;customers&quot;) and to go after research grants than there used to be. One can complain about that all day long, but the reality is that that is in large parts a function of how the income sources of universities have shifted, and what the expectations of those who provide this income are today (students, research funders: wanting to get a good education/research product for their money) in comparison to what they were 20 years ago (states: wanting to benefit the welfare of the state's population). The issue that professors complain about is that the expectations that come with these new sources of revenue are not aligned with what faculty like to do: research and teach.
All of this is not to say that there aren't other issues that also fall under the &quot;operate like a business&quot; category and that are much less driven by external factors. Among these are administrator salaries, for example, and I think that for that there really is no good reason why they should be as high as they are.