Where I'm from, master's was the traditional undergraduate degree. Bachelor's degrees were introduced later, but the society was reluctant to accept them. For a long time, the industry considered people with a bachelor's degree little more than glorified dropouts.
Our PhDs also used to take really long, being closer to a habilitation in some European countries than what is currently typical for a PhD. But starting in the 90s, there was a lot of pressure towards shorter American-style PhDs.
These days, the nominal duration of studies is 3 years for a bachelor's, 2 years for a master's, and 4 years for a PhD, but people usually spend at least a couple of years more. Which is pretty comparable to how things are done in the US.
The other end of the spectrum is the British system, where you can do a 3-year PhD after a 3-year bachelor's. But they also have longer PhD programs and optional intermediate degrees.
Yet, European leaders have not got the memo, and expect the same level of output.
What DO we rely on that has come out of MIT this century? I'm having a real hard time thinking of examples.
Take mRNA vaccines for instance - the initial research began in university environments in the 80s, and it continued to be researched in universities (including in Europe) through the 00s until Moderna and BioNTech were started in the late 00s. All the exploratory work that led to the covid vaccine being possible was driven through universities up to the point where it became corporate. If that research hadn't been done, there would have been nothing to start a company about.
It's the same in computing - The modern wave of LLMs was set off by Attention is All you Need, sure, but the building blocks all came from academia. NNs have been an academic topic since the 80s and 90s.
I suspect that in 2050, there will be plenty of stuff being built on the foundations of work conducted in academia in the 00s and 10s.
I wouldn't expect to see that many groundbreaking innovations being useful in day-to-day life coming out of contemporary university research. You have to wait several decades to see the fruits of the labour.