Arguably, it's the opposite. Once people realized academics could do this kind of cool shit, they got showered with money and told to do whatever the they want. That's how we got the incredible scientific and engineering advances of the second half of 20th century.
Then the beancounters started asking questions about what the money actually buys, and research quickly turned into another short-term, self-contained, profit-chasing game, starved for resources and only occasionally producing something actually useful.
As it is, if our researchers are spending almost all their time thinking about and doing things other than research, what do we expect?
On a tangent, software industry has a bit of similar problem, with the best developers being forced to enter management roles[0] instead of solving technical problems. That is, a developer progresses from doing shoddy work to doing mediocre work and then, just as they start doing high-quality work, they get told to manage a new cohort of juniors doing shoddy work instead. I wonder if that's why so much software is hot garbage these days.
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[0] - Whether proper ones on management path, or "fake" ones like principal developer, where you get all the managerial responsibilities with none of the authority.
Thaaaaannnkkk you. It has technically been reserved for Christian Aristocracy, which is practically a world where there is no desperation for calories. Instead many of the greats had an anxiety of their immortality (see Fourier).