I worked at the Dept. of Astronomy and Astrophysics at $respected_university for about 10 years, and I think your comments aren't super accurate as a description of a solution to their problems and I don't think the ending snark is accurate or necessary.
Go look at any major astro department, and you'll see there's not a lot of fat to be trimmed. I was "administration" as you probably consider it, but they do actually need sysadmins to keep things running so everyone else can focus on the science. I can assure you there weren't enough of us. There weren't any asst. deans of pencil sharpening or whatever sucking up the department's valuable funds.
To your earlier point, if they thought they were useful, I'm sure someone would have bought such an array. In fact, two of the above commenters mentioned such a project. The thing to keep in mind is that these things aren't free. You need engineers to put them together, professors to write the grants, software engineers and grad students to write the software, trips to go set them up, grad students to do the analysis, etc. Those all cost money.
None of the professors at my university (and most other universities with which we interacted) were interested in the subjects described in the articles as good candidates for amateur telescopes though, so it's kind of irrelevant. Whether that's where their interests truly lay or whether that's where the grant money is, I couldn't say. At any rate, all the visual spectrum experimentalists in the department needed big telescopes in clear places for long exposures to study their chosen subjects.
Additionally, at least in my department, the visual spectrum experimentalists were a distinct minority, maybe about 10% of the faculty. The rest were theoreticians (50% or so), microwave astronomers, radio astronomers, x-ray astronomers, etc. My university has been historically theory-heavy so that may be different elsewhere.
Would the experimentalists have liked more time on Keck, Hubble, Chandra, VLA, etc.? I'm certain they would have, but a few dozen backyard 30cm telescopes aren't going to get the job done.
Go look at any major astro department, and you'll see there's not a lot of fat to be trimmed. I was "administration" as you probably consider it, but they do actually need sysadmins to keep things running so everyone else can focus on the science. I can assure you there weren't enough of us. There weren't any asst. deans of pencil sharpening or whatever sucking up the department's valuable funds.
To your earlier point, if they thought they were useful, I'm sure someone would have bought such an array. In fact, two of the above commenters mentioned such a project. The thing to keep in mind is that these things aren't free. You need engineers to put them together, professors to write the grants, software engineers and grad students to write the software, trips to go set them up, grad students to do the analysis, etc. Those all cost money.
None of the professors at my university (and most other universities with which we interacted) were interested in the subjects described in the articles as good candidates for amateur telescopes though, so it's kind of irrelevant. Whether that's where their interests truly lay or whether that's where the grant money is, I couldn't say. At any rate, all the visual spectrum experimentalists in the department needed big telescopes in clear places for long exposures to study their chosen subjects.
Additionally, at least in my department, the visual spectrum experimentalists were a distinct minority, maybe about 10% of the faculty. The rest were theoreticians (50% or so), microwave astronomers, radio astronomers, x-ray astronomers, etc. My university has been historically theory-heavy so that may be different elsewhere.
Would the experimentalists have liked more time on Keck, Hubble, Chandra, VLA, etc.? I'm certain they would have, but a few dozen backyard 30cm telescopes aren't going to get the job done.