You wrote that "most major university libraries already have licenses to the closed data", when you SHOULD have written "most major WEALTHY university libraries already have licenses to the closed data."

Even before the current economic problems, many public universities have been cutting journal subscriptions wholesale, and the trend is only increasing. I work at one of the campuses of the City University of New York and our journal subscriptions are abysmal. If you publish regularly in any of the more expensive commercial journals (outside of the very tip-top 5 or so in your field), I can guarantee you that your work is not being read as much as it perhaps should be at my institution.

Of course, the administrative and budgetary problems you describe with the current open access model are very real - I certainly don't have the budget to publish exclusively in these journals. Nonetheless, the ever-increasing costs of the commercial system are leading to some serious problems and contributing to a growing divide between the haves and the have-nots of the academic science world.

If there were only one or two commercial journals that I would like to access that my library does not subscribe to, I would be willing to bite the bullet and buy personal subscriptions, but I cannot afford to buy personal subscriptions to a dozen or more commercial journals.

While "$10-20k/year for page charges" may only "result in less science," it doesn't matter how much science you do if no one reads it... Instead of paying these charges out of our direct grant funds, our institutions need to make institution-wide deals with open access publishers out of our grant overhead (re-routing, for example, the money that they are currently spending on overpriced commercial journal subscriptions).

This farce is intellectual masturbation for the rich in its purest form.

True. However, the last sentence of the original post is "If it's relevant, I have a US citizenship." So, it would seem the poster qualifies.

I believe that many National Science Foundation funded Research Experience for Undergraduates programs will take exceptional high school students.

See http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/

You seem to believe that the sole role of the professor is to teach undergraduate classes. Most professors have at least 7 separate roles: (1) undergraduate classes, (2) undergraduate mentoring, (3) graduate classes, (4) graduate mentoring, (5) research and publishing, (6) grant-writing, and (7) administration.

How these are prioritized is not really up to the average professor, it is determined by the university administration, board of directors, etc. Take your irritation at the current state of affairs to them.

I'm not really arguing the point you're making here, but there is more nuance to it.

So, sticking to the sciences at research universities, these departments are serving dual roles: (1) vocational - preparing people for careers requiring a scientific background, and (2) creating the next generation of researchers.

My experience is that creating the next generation of researchers is the prioritized goal, and this happens in the lab, in independent study, laboratory rotations, and internships. It does not happen in the lecture hall. So, even if the faculty are not the best teachers, they are (hopefully) among the best in their area of research. And research faculty who are more respected, are more cutting edge, are more published, will open significantly more opportunities for the students on the research track. In order to attract these researchers, universities prioritize research over teaching.

Now, I would agree that wider scientific understanding is something that needs greater emphasis, the "transmission through the generations" of the heart of scientific practice and knowledge will never and can never happen in the lecture hall. However, while you can get basic scientific knowledge taught as - more or less - a byproduct of a research development focused program, you cannot get research development as a byproduct of a "good teacher" focused program. Even small research schools (e.g. CalTech) may appear to have "good teaching," but what they mostly have is a small enough, and motivated enough, student body that they can get a much higher percentage into the lab.

Ok. I'm sure you're right then. Start a college, make a killing.

Among other expenses, facilities and administration.

You have to perform upkeep on all of the buildings and pay for utilities. You have to pay all the people who perform upkeep on the buildings. You have to buy all the equipment needed for upkeep on the buildings. You need to replace all this equipment as it wears out.

You have to pay the administration. The registrar's office, financial aid office, bursar's office, etc.

You have to fill a library. Beyond the costs of buying books, you have to pay for journal subscriptions (per title costs range from $100 to $5000 per year).

And this is just an off-the-top-of-my-head, certainly incomplete, list.

For all practical intents and purposes, places like MIT and other research universities ARE pure research institutions. Faculty at these institutions do not get hired or receive tenure because they are good (or even competent) teachers, they get hired and tenured because they have a good research program. Some may be good teachers, some may enjoy teaching, but it is a relatively small part of professorial evaluation. For that matter, most professors (at any college or university, small or large) will not have had ANY formal teacher training.

Even for fields that do have research-only institutions (e.g. physics at CERN), research-only institutions employ a tiny percentage of all basic researchers, and the vast majority of basic research is conducted at universities.