However, the other big product of universities is education (and I think it’s fair to say that most people who would think of attending one see the value in universities through how they can educate, rather than whatever research is going on). And “shipping” good lessons, close connections with students, and great results is rarely recognised, and doesn’t help you get a job in the future. (It might help you look better compared to someone publishing equally as many or impactful papers, but it’s the papers first).

The other thing that this publish-regularly mentality can prevent is very long-term forward-looking projects - for some problems it is not clear what an answer should even look like, let alone how to get there. The closest thing to compare it to might be starting a new company - perhaps it takes 6 to 12 months to work on a product enough to start selling it. This is time that people simply don’t have in some academic fields, where they will be seen as underperforming, so it discourages these long-term projects entirely.