If you read The History of Education (1920)[0] which outlines how the American and the Preussian system of education it is based on was created and on what basis, you'll see that this is exactly true. Education has never, ever been about exploration, or knowledge for its own sake. It has always been about increasing productivity for businesses, and tax revenue for government.
[0] https://archive.org/stream/briefhistoryofed00cubbuoft/briefh...
For certain departments an amount of prestige is owed not just to the research you put out, but how many students you successfully place in jobs in the field.
I studied geography at a mid tier public school and this school of thought was pretty prevalent. The professors used open source software in their research but when I learned statistics it was IBM SPSS and GIS was all ESRI and MapInfo. The department even hand curates a list of alumni and their current employers for marketability to future students.
When hired, I was told that my job is to prepare the students to work in a cubicle.
This is reflected in the curriculum - for example, proprietary software is taught (even where open source tools excel), because they are more likely to be found in the large corporation they are being prepared for.
If you think of cubicle training as the main job of the university, it follows that large corporations would look for degrees.