Believe it or not, the ideal you are talking about doesn't really exist anymore unfortunately. Even university research nowadays is primarily funded by external

Believe it or not, the ideal you are talking about doesn't really exist anymore unfortunately. Even university research nowadays is primarily funded by external sources (government and industry). The more affluent universities have internal funding setup which is typically quite competitive and needs some sort of deliverable anyways. Case in point: the most desirable skill in a university professor is figuring out how to convince others to fund your work, while also giving them something in return. The exception of course is government. NSF and similar government programs are the only funding sources for pure basic research as far as I know.