I'm not saying we get 0 valuable output from Academia, I know better to say extreme statements like that.
I have seen the people who get PhDs and they are not A or B students... They are the ones that Industry wouldn't accept.
I have read what is deemed 'science', and more time is spent calculating statistics, than understanding their dataset was a terrible. It looks really fancy.
I have read what is published in 'Prestigious' journals like Nature, and there doesnt seem to be a correlation between replicable and predictive science and trendy ideas.
What recently irked me, I was talking to a a tenured/post-doc/professor, and we pulled up some scientific study that seemed like it contradicted the empirical evidence I observed. He looked at the publisher, 'Nature', accepted it, and moved on instantly. I immediately scrolled down to the Data. It seems like Academia is more of an Authority than Science.