The Economist reports on a new research paper highlighting the negative productivity feedback loop between private enterprise and the ivory tower:

Why do companies struggle to use ideas produced by universities? The loss of the corporate lab is one part of the answer. […] That cross-cutting expertise is now largely gone. Another part of the answer concerns universities. Free from the demands of corporate overlords, research focuses more on satisfying geeks’ curiosity or boosting citation counts than it does on finding breakthroughs that will change the world or make money. In moderation, research for research’s sake is no bad thing; some breakthrough technologies, such as penicillin, were discovered almost by accident. But if everyone is arguing over how many angels dance on the head of a pin, the economy suffers.

While we’re on campus, here’s Adam Kotsko in Slate on his students’ increasing struggle to engage with even a moderate volume of weekly reading:

Large-scale prose writing is the best medium we have for capturing that complexity, and the education system should not be in the business of keeping students from learning how to engage effectively with it.

And, from Katy Balls’s latest Spectator dispatch about the omnishambles leadership change-curious Tory caucus, here’s the funniest paragraph that I read all week:

To many watching, the whole thing looks very amateurish. ‘If you are working on a plot, you don’t go around telling everyone,’ ventures a Conservative insider. ‘That’s plotting 101.’ Some former party strategists have been approached and said no. Tory MPs – including many Trussites – are making it known they aren’t on board with the plan. But the plotters think time could change that.