There’s a bit more as well. Corporations have been closing their research labs over several decades and chasing short term profits over longer-term-payoff research. All that risk is passed onto university research labs (and the grad students that actually do the work) and heavily subsidized by the government. There is then little to no incentive for a professor to care about teaching and is rewarded for bringing in grant money. Students incentives are papers (and the prestige that follows) and the machine is born.

Basically, the neoliberal project is moving the risk of research out of corporations and the public pays for it.