This criticism always gets me. Just how pure do you expect academics to be? They're already not working for the same money they could be getting in industry, now they also have to eschew prestige in their own communities, or else they're not driven by the pure intellectual pursuit of knowledge and science? When you're paid half of what you're worth, you find meaning in social constructs other than money and wealth.
> students are the hardest working bunch in academia
This is an opinion often held by students and graduates who haven't see what's behind the curtain. I've found students are always shocked to find out how much work professors actually do. This is prime material for the "what I think I do, what they think I do, what I actually do" meme.