Yes, Universities have become fiscalized to an extent. They
increasingly behave more like businesses whose purpose is to extract
grant money from the government than institutions committed to learning
and research.
Essentially, it’s the publication process. It has become a system of
collecting counters for particular purposes – to get grants, to get
tenure, etc. – rather than to communicate and illuminate findings to
other people. The literature is, by and large, unreadable. It’s all
written in a kind of code, with inappropriate data in large amounts,
and the storyline is becoming increasingly orchestrated by this need
to publish. We all know it. We all suffer from it. I think the changes
to the scientific enterprise have been inexorable and progressive. The
deterioration has been so steady that people don’t really realise how
much things have changed.
A problem for many universities is that they don't even really succeed at it. This grant-sucking infrastructure isn't free, and apart from the direct costs of grantwriting / paperwork / etc., universities sometimes even undertake major expenditures with a view towards making themselves more attractive to grants, e.g. tailoring construction or hiring towards grant opportunities, flying people around and hosting events to oil the gears of potential partnerships, etc., etc.
The top research universities pull in enough grants to make that all worth it, but many smaller universities don't ever come out ahead, though they like to pretend they do. There are small schools where they consider it a huge success that they land a $1m NSF grant now and then, but they are almost certainly spending more than $1m every few years to do so. In addition, even when you do land grants, co-financing is becoming more popular, so the university ends up having to kick in even more money in the successful case.
"The Heart of Research is Sick" http://www.labtimes.org/labtimes/issues/lt2011/lt02/lt_2011_...