"Brian Greene has remarked that today’s grant-driven academia would not have allowed Einstein the luxury of a decade in which to develop his General Theory of Relativity."

Academia has been a force for stagnation well before the 1900s. e.g. Einstein wasn't working in Academia when he released his 1905 General Theory of Relativity paper. He spent 1901-1908 working in the patent office while releasing papers outside of Academia. Only in 1908 he was appointed lecturer in acknowledgment of his existing works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Patent_office

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_Mirabilis_Papers#Special...

If you want to figure out what's wrong with Academia I suggest asking economists who deal with incentives and market forces as a subject of research as opposed to the anecdotes of a few well-meaning physicists. Yes, the physicists are clearly smarter. But with few exceptions they're just not trained or equipped to asses these problems.