Probably. My former employer had a pretty active research collaboration with a number of universities because they weren't that huge (especially at the time) an

Probably. My former employer had a pretty active research collaboration with a number of universities because they weren't that huge (especially at the time) and one professor in particular at a local university wanted the grounding of industry collaboration. It's a balancing act. Many PhD students also care about working on stuff that real people actually care about.