From what I've read, he explicitly sought a position that would give him time to work on his physics ideas. Whether he would or not would have achieved the same

From what I've read, he explicitly sought a position that would give him time to work on his physics ideas. Whether he would or not would have achieved the same working for a university is merely his opinion. In particular, it was not the case that he was working for one, and found it to be incompatible with his research vision, and left academia to become a patent clerk. He began his work on the PhD prior to 1903.