I was being somewhat sarcastic, but I'd suggest that students and professors get some self-interested benefit from the system, or it wouldn't have come to exist.
The schools get to make it look like they are producing high-quality students with publications, without the professors actually having to do much work to make this true.
The students get to graduate, and get a publication credit, regardless of the quality of their work, so long as they can pay.
heh i know u were. i get what youre saying here but my issue with that is it just leads to like watered-down pseudo-journals of questionable reputation.
it almost feels like a better alternative would be for the students to run their own informal conferences & publish through an open publishing network (a lot of these are emerging in academia to subvert all the licensing BS from the journals)
The schools get to make it look like they are producing high-quality students with publications, without the professors actually having to do much work to make this true.
The students get to graduate, and get a publication credit, regardless of the quality of their work, so long as they can pay.