The uni system couldn't afford to give tenured professors freedom to follow their fancy without the "underclass" working hard to make it possible in the first

The uni system couldn't afford to give tenured professors freedom to follow their fancy without the "underclass" working hard to make it possible in the first place — graduate students and untenured staff do the high-volume work needed to make profits: churning out tens of thousands of undergrads per year, paid for by fed-backed loans, and definitely not all of them taught by Feynman-type professors. I don't know if that's true, that's just my model of how American university works.