Agreed. I know of a single academic faculty who leads engineering research efforts with 40+ research faculty, 4 dedicated administrative staff, and 200+ doctoral students. Most students rarely interact with the PI and are really advised by research faculty. This one lab houses close to half of the doctoral students in that department. Now, I've never talked to the PI, but I imagine he's a decent enough person.
I have a strong feeling that academic research will lose its way since financial incentives attract money-driven faculty and disincentivise the pursuit of fundamental, academic research questions.
On the other hand, you'll get poorly-baked fundamental ideas from the faculty, like the idea that Wikipedia is the best source of knowledge because social consensus is the best way to figure out the truth, an idea which is explicitly advocated by a tenured faculty member at a major university and is clearly false because people are capable of lying. Empirical validation of mathematical models is actually the best way.
I have a strong feeling that academic research will lose its way since financial incentives attract money-driven faculty and disincentivise the pursuit of fundamental, academic research questions.
On the other hand, you'll get poorly-baked fundamental ideas from the faculty, like the idea that Wikipedia is the best source of knowledge because social consensus is the best way to figure out the truth, an idea which is explicitly advocated by a tenured faculty member at a major university and is clearly false because people are capable of lying. Empirical validation of mathematical models is actually the best way.