In many fields of study, the money that goes into academic research is essentially more of high-level-talent education expense, so that local companies have pools of PhDs to hire from, rather than needing to produce a invention that will be commercialized.
E.g. if you look at PhD graduates only one in a few hundred (even in STEM fields) will end up on a path that commercializes their research, with most of the other ones moving into industry and likely not working on a directly related subject to their thesis. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
E.g. if you look at PhD graduates only one in a few hundred (even in STEM fields) will end up on a path that commercializes their research, with most of the other ones moving into industry and likely not working on a directly related subject to their thesis. That's not necessarily a bad thing.