It's a bit worse than that. Prestige matters a lot too. General rule of thumb is that you can only apply to a position at a university of equal or lesser ranking than the one you were previously at. (obviously can still climb the ladder, in many ways, but this is a strong pattern all throughout the process from High School to Tenure) You're exactly right about the number of positions problem too. Because clearly the result of this is that the quality and methods from higher ranking institutions diffuse into lower ranking ones. Hell, when I was at a community college I had a professor from Harvard and several from Berkeley. Prestigue doesn't make sense in a system like that because you can't maintain an edge when you are literally telling the people you trained to go work somewhere else.
I think you're exactly right about the reasons people keep quiet. But this is not helpful to anyone, especially the universities. They are certainly losing a lot of money and even prestige from all of this. You don't make Nobel laureates with publish or perish. But no one wants to shake things up, which is weird because academia is __explicitly__ supposed to be the place where you can focus on things that aren't profit driven. Or at least short ROI. It is a loss for the country too, as it means a lot of academics move away from low risky TRL research and follow a model much closer to industry research (which is profit driven) Historically industry has (generally) relied on academic research doing low TRL and then they bring it to mid and high TRL.
We've lost sight of what we're trying to accomplish.
I just wanted to comment regarding the rule you mentioned and wanted to say that I was always told that, unofficially, you can always move up but only a tier at a time and you don’t want to move down if you can avoid it because then you likely have to move back up. The calculus does get harder though the longer you’re in the game — you might elect to move down because you’re significant other gets a promotion or you don’t want to uproot your family, etc.
For sure, they aren't hard rules. There is also the aspect that locations matter to some people. It's worth noting though that universities have a unique negotiating token, in that you can also negotiate for a job for your partner as well. I think universities are often forced into this because of the natural location constraints.
I think you're exactly right about the reasons people keep quiet. But this is not helpful to anyone, especially the universities. They are certainly losing a lot of money and even prestige from all of this. You don't make Nobel laureates with publish or perish. But no one wants to shake things up, which is weird because academia is __explicitly__ supposed to be the place where you can focus on things that aren't profit driven. Or at least short ROI. It is a loss for the country too, as it means a lot of academics move away from low risky TRL research and follow a model much closer to industry research (which is profit driven) Historically industry has (generally) relied on academic research doing low TRL and then they bring it to mid and high TRL.
We've lost sight of what we're trying to accomplish.