This is mostly the result of the understandable human desire to maintain one's lot in life and resist any change that might threaten it. The machine that is higher education feeds lots and lots of people who believe fervently that...

1. Conventional Higher education is a good thing thus, more of it is a better thing.

2. Being part of such a noble and critical societal function, they deserve ever-increasing slices of the economic pie.

Instead of recognising that conventional higher education is collapsing under the dual effects of self-created bloated excess and technology-driven consolidation, they prefer to pretend the insular world they've created still exists.

It's a bit like being a Pony Express rider on the day the Transcontinental Telegraph was completed.