Where do you get all this BS from — that professors don’t care about teaching (in all tenure processes I have been part of, if the candidate is not good at teaching, s/he does not get a positive tenure vote; most of my colleagues get 4+ out of 5 on their student evaluations), that they do not work hard (some spend well over 40 hours, other don’t — just like any other jobs out there), and so on. And while some of the research can be esoteric and may not benefit research, a lot of research directly involves educating students with novel things not taught in the classrooms and involving them in the innovation process and address real-world human/social/economic development issues. Vast majority of a typical research grant is spent for two or three things: undergrad and graduate research assistantships (making education fee for funded students, and imagine doing a PhD without funding!), faculty summer salaries (remember they get only 9 month salaries, and salaries in computer science and such areas could be far lower than what Industry pays- one of my colleagues left for Industry and gets $350K, about 3 times his university salary), and supplies/equipment (in biology, buying animals or chemicals can be expensive, in computer sc or engineering, research equipment train students who work on research). And if professors are not learning and cannot train new students, they cannot teach classes on new topics (many routinely do) or get research funding (most research funding is highly competitive — with ~10% win rate, that is statistically only 1 in 10 gets funding!).