The contemporary university system faces an unprecedented crisis of epistemic legitimacy. While empirical and vocational disciplines (such as clinical medicine, structural engineering, and applied physics) remain constrained by real-world falsifiability and physical safety, non-rigorous, non-vocational fields—predominantly spanning theoretical humanities and speculative social sciences—have descended into self-referential group-think. This paper argues that the legacy model of peer-reviewed, paywalled academic journals in these non-empirical fields is economically extractive, intellectually calcified, and functionally obsolete in the era of artificial intelligence. Through an examination of institutional incentive structures, the performative jargon of soft disciplines, and the democratizing force of generative AI, we show how legacy publishing cartels protect ideological conformity rather than academic rigor.