Nope. It's mostly about maintaining the class structure, and at least at first this was openly the goal, we've just done a good job starting to pretend that isn

Nope. It's mostly about maintaining the class structure, and at least at first this was openly the goal, we've just done a good job starting to pretend that isn't what it is about within the past 60 years or so. Research still happened before all that, it was just funded directly by a patron, which is actually kind of how trying to get a grant works today.