You're conflating the educational and research objectives of universities. Much of the tech industry's disdain for academia stems from negative personal experie

You're conflating the educational and research objectives of universities. Much of the tech industry's disdain for academia stems from negative personal experiences with taking courses at top universities, typically due to a lack of caring on the part of instructors, who are more interested in working on their research (that disdain is then compounded by experiencing the rapid social/economic impact software engineering in the tech industry can have, particularly when compared to the slow progress of academic research). This perspective is understandable, and top universities should hire dedicated instructional faculty for all the lower-level undergrad classes, and leave the researchers to their own devices. In any case, the presence of undergrad students on campuses has surprisingly little to do with the goings-on of academic research, although they may occur in the same geographic locales and have some common actors. The widespread success of MOOCs (which now seems quite unlikely) would have a negligible impact on academic research.