>But who does the in between stuff?

Whoever slips through the cracks.

>The golden age of the corporate lab then came to an end when competition policy loosened in the 1970s and 1980s.

Even more significant was the way the dollar quickly lost half its value during fewer years than the full decade.

Nobody could afford anything near what they needed to carry on without devastating cutbacks, and research across-the-board was set back decades from which it still might not recover.

Universities were where you were supposed to become professional researchers, if you had the natural inclination and could be admitted, and prove your abilities during academic projects. In the 1960's Gatorade was recognized as an anomaly by being invented at Florida, when people in general still expected things like that to be developed by consumer product companies.

This was traditionally most young professionals' last time to seriously pursue research without having a practical application, once they got into industry the commercialization possibilities and aspects formed a completely different foundation to build a creative career on, compared to what little could be expected from a few years of formal education in a purely academic environment.

You were supposed to graduate up to the "real world" where companies were much better funded than universities and the majority of a research career was spent under the umbrella of a profitable corporation, which naturally contributes to an economy like it is supposed to do.

Too bad companies couldn't afford that any more, it was decimated so quickly and regretfully that the only realistic widespread attitude was telling themselves it was "only temporary", and they'll pick up where they left off when "things get back to normal".

But prices never came back down and the value of the dollar never recovered, just a few bubbles burst. But it was essential for financial interests to make it easier for most of the lighter-than-air delicate things like that to stay afloat longer or there would have been an even worse collapse.

Barely afloat for so long is not the kind of thing where very many people or companies are going to be able to afford research ever again.

The Nixon Recession was brutal, and the Reagan Recession just put the nails in the coffin economically for many tens of millions more whose continued hard work would have otherwise built generational wealth orders of magnitude more than it turned out. For those that recovered at all.

But you knew that part.

Right now tens of millions have rapidly been set back decades just from the inflation of the last few years, and that's not even "runaway" inflation.

Companies were folding left and right, others laying off thousands and jettisoning anything just to stay afloat.

After Gatorade, more and more universities did try and come up with marketable things, and really do have more than 50 years of dramatically more numerous commercial items emerging from the firm academic foundation. But nothing compared to what industrial researchers accomplished economically during 50 years in the 20th century.

And this is one of the reasons.

Researcher or not, you can work your butt off for decades but can't really contribute much to the economy if the dollar isn't worth that much any more.