Why does there seem to be a lack of oversight when it comes to how professors interact with students?
For example, consider the following questions:
How to deal with an advisor who wants a "friendlier" relationship with me than I do?
My professor is rigging data and plagiarizing. What can I do?
My first authorship is being turned into co-first authorship, what can I do?
I understand that these situations are not typical, but why is this able to exist at all in the academic world? In all three of these situations it seems that there is a complete lack of oversight of professors went it comes to their interactions with student and it seems their students can do very little if they are being treated unfairly.
I ask this because in many ways, it seems that academia is much more objective and fair than the corporate world. For example, one cannot get a faculty position at a top school by interviewing well or because their friend heads the department. College admissions tend to very (perhaps, even brutally) objective. Lastly, outright fraud and theft of one's work tends to be low compared to outside academia. I suppose my point of confusion is why does academia fail to be as strict and fair at the professor/student level.
To give some context to my question, I work in the software industry and I am approaching this question as a total outsider. It seems like the academic world tries to do everything it can to be fair, but I don't (as an outsider) see this with the professor/student dynamic.