One serious problem with universities, and the explicit reason Danny Hillis had to create Thinking Machines to get his Connection Machine (CM, first version) de

One serious problem with universities, and the explicit reason Danny Hillis had to create Thinking Machines to get his Connection Machine (CM, first version) developed, is that they can't pay researcher more than the pay professors. The CM needed 1-2 top notch analog engineers there were wires in the interconnect that had to hit each of the processor chips, which could be as many as 65,536. And, yeah, the people who pay for this sort of thing have been on a campaign since the '80s to drive down salaries for STEM researchers; the only reason the fields are doing half-way well nowadays is the Great Recession has made other field suck, and of course lots of private money from companies like Google and Uber.