>I can't believe this is a workable model for mathematicians, either. It already is. Pure math departments are largely service oriented. They exist to teach en

>I can't believe this is a workable model for mathematicians, either. It already is. Pure math departments are largely service oriented. They exist to teach engineers calculus. They are already spending a great deal of time doing non-research tasks, just like musicians you described. The exceptions would be the very top researchers at R1 schools, and even then they often spend time advising students and teaching occasional courses. It's not super common to have people do nothing but research in a pure math department.