The academia is far from being homogeneous. Institutions in the same country are usually similar, but things vary a lot between countries. Science is fundament

The academia is far from being homogeneous. Institutions in the same country are usually similar, but things vary a lot between countries. Science is fundamentally an activity, not a field. You can do scientific research in most fields. Agriculture and software are nice examples, as academic scientists are doing both. And in many cases, the outputs are used by the general public. Quantitative metrics such as citations, paper counts, and impact factors are mostly used by bureaucrats who don't know what they are doing. Actual evaluations in reputable institutions depend heavily on the subjective judgment of other people in the field. The role of grants varies a lot between fields and insitutions. In some cases, a professor is expected to become a manager, win grants, and hire other people to do their research. In other cases, grants are nice but optional. Such professors can do research with limited external support, both personally and with students funded from other sources.