Since the Academy in ancient Athens, universities have been engine rooms for human success through the discovery, recording, sorting and propagation of knowledge. Something however has changed in the past two generations. Not for the better. Government policy is again a key contributor.

Peter Turchin is a Russian-American complexity scientist whose field is the statistical analysis of historical trends. Turchin describes ‘elite overproduction’ as a factor contributing to political and social instability that nations and empires experience between their zenith and downfall. He argues that an excess of elites was a contributor in the fall of Rome and the Ancien Régime in 18th century France. Elite overproduction occurs when a society becomes so affluent and arrogant that it produces more elites than it can absorb, let alone needs.

Elite overproduction occurs in two principal ways. The first is biologically where, for example, a fertile royal family procreates faster than positions can be created for new royals. The other way is through economic and educational upward mobility.

It needs saying upfront that elites are a natural phenomenon. In a meritocracy, there will be an informal and fluid elite based on excellence where members are looked to for leadership. Inherent in the definition of an ‘elite’ however is that very few meet the criteria. When there is an unnaturally large elite, society becomes top-heavy and ripe for toppling.

As societies get wealthier, more people seek tertiary education, and as they secure an increasing allocation of resources, universities are morphing from centres of knowledge into factories for producing a less meritorious elite credentialled with great expectations.

It is considered ‘sound government policy’ to shovel as many youngsters into university as possible, subsidised by the taxes of the many who will never attend university. As usual, government subsidies result in over-production, in this case, of graduates with fancy qualifications. And when they cannot be absorbed into the economy, the surplus elite seeks to capture institutions which provide the pay and prestige of the elite without the prerequisite achievement.

What then occurs is a turn to leftist politics to distort institutions and create new ones for a never-ending list of elite causes. This necessitates an expansion of government beyond society’s needs. Corruption generally follows.

Rather than striving for excellence for the benefit of all, the elites of 4th century Rome and 18th century France were fastidious about buttressing their exalted lifestyles. Similarly, during the Dark Ages there was an over-supply of clerics and in the Soviet Union, an oversupply of apparatchiks.

Public sector employment traditionally involved a trade-off between wages and job security. Wages would be a little below those in the private sector, but public servants were largely immune to recessions and the risk of lay-offs. Today, the public service still offers high job security but higher than market wages. And when bureaucratic benches are full, excess elites move into corporate administration and compliance, the corollaries of bureaucratic expansion.

Once in their roles, it is these elites who design and implement policies to reduce competition and market-risk to benefit incumbents and their progeny. The public service is replete with multi-generational family dynasties out of public view.

The policy intention in seeking to expand the ranks of the tertiary educated was honourable but miscalculated. Graduates generally earn more than non-graduates, so the state calculated ‘more graduates, more tax revenue’. But producing more graduates did not change the structure of economy to absorb additional graduates.

Australia, with a workforce of 13.8 million persons counts (conservatively) 2.2 million public sector employees (one in six). And within universities (whose workers are not counted as public sector employees) the number of administrators is breathtaking.

The Group of Eight (Go8) represents Australia’s oldest and most prestigious universities. In 2021, total wages and salaries in the Go8 totalled $8.5 billion. Of this, a meagre 53 per cent was spent on academics. Almost half of Go8 university salary expenditure is on people who don’t participate in the core business of universities: teaching or research. Canberra’s Australian National University leads the way spending 51 per cent on non-academic staff.

The product and purpose of universities seems to be subtly changing from the discovery of truth to the enforcement of dogma. The university-originated assaults on Western civilisation are but a means to entrench a meritless elite – the most dangerous kind.

With excess elites claiming more and more public resources (for example middle-class welfare and corporate subsidies), a date for social disturbance is set when there are insufficient spoils to sustain the increasing numbers. Elites get grumpy, blame the system, and then work to overthrow it by whipping up the masses.

The initial skirmishes have already been seen with the public policy response to recent shocks like the Global Financial Crisis and Covid. In both cases, the elite members of the financial sector and the laptop-ocracy, not only survived but thrived at the expense of the general citizenry.

Turchin’s theory also neatly intersects with that of Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter to possibly explain the assaults on Western civilisation and the general growth of grievance studies. Schumpeter wrote in the 1940s that capitalism had the seeds of its own destruction in its DNA because it gives rise to an intellectual class that can only be sustained by the wealth created by liberal capitalism. Schumpeter proposed that intellectuals were hostile to capitalism, and hence liberalism, because they believed they would not win the rewards they felt was their due in a competitive society.

With a new year, another batch of Australian high school graduates are being channelled into universities. For many, it is the right and best path. For others it is not. Too many will become over-qualified, highly indebted baristas, burger flippers and administrators, overly compliant with the latest dogma and angry and bitter at their lowly station. They will focus their ire on the ills of capitalism rather than the real culprit.

A realignment is required before the tipping point is passed.