Increasingly, the notion that seems to backfire is “publish or perish.” Publishing research papers in all areas of generations of knowledge (i.e., disciplines) seems to have updated its course. Lately, however, what seems to dominate the business of the generation of knowledge is the attribute of expansion. Expansion in volume and numbers; still doubtful of the quality, though. What seems to change its course is yet an obvious question that research organizations, universities, and other educational institutions increasingly face is the question of “Why fund research?”. Increasingly, private players' intervention seems to impact the existing research landscape worldwide. Looking at just the discipline of economics, the below graph from Aigner, Greenspon, & Rodrik (2021) demonstrates the irrational yet exponential growth in several journals and published research papers over the last four decades. While growth in numbers is evident, a question of perspective remains. As follows
In my novice attempts to understand higher education choices during my PhD the last few years, I have always wondered what factors matter the most. Of course, there are models of the orthodox or the newer types. I have mostly relied on the orthodox ones that take a general pool of variables and then predict the probabilities. I am using " orthodox " to indicate the pool of models that are accepted but are old and honestly have less empirical relevance. The fact that these are old doesn't reduce their logical validity; it is just that they are too general to learn from and imply something without relying on stronger assumptions. These are mainly the discrete choice family models that have existed for decades. They give us statements like, " Having the per-capita income increased by X amount, the Pr(Choosing Enrollment in Higher Education) increases (or decreases in case of the circumstances) by Y%". They are more of confirmation (not useless research findi