“Despite an academic job market that has been anemic at best and disastrous at worst for more than 35 years, top Ph.D. programs still receive far more qualified applicants than they can hope to admit, includ[ing] a rising proportion from overseas. America’s position in basic research, as measured in such things as Nobel Prizes, seems unchallenged. European academics generally regard the American academic system with untrammeled envy … [T]his is the sort of ‘obsolescence’ that Chrysler and The New York Times can only dream of.”