This is interesting. Is there a reason why this started happening in the 90s?

I think a lot of it is covered under "New Public Management" [0], which was maybe a result of the financialization happening in the 80's [1].

And I completely GP, having been in or in contact with academic research since the late 90's, there has been a very strong shift from a culture where the faculty had means for independent research, and were trusted to find their own direction, to the system we have today where a research project has much tighter overlook and reporting than most corporate projects.

A professor with a 4-5 person group will typically need two staggered pipelines of 4-5year funding projects to run risk free. In the EU it is virtually impossible to get funding for projects that do not involve multiple countries, so you need to set up and nurture partnerships for each project. Coordination the application process for these consortia is a major hassle and often outsourced at a rate of 50kEUR + win bonus. And you of course need to run multiple applications to make sure to get anything. When I talked to mentors about joining academia around 2010, the most common response was "don't".

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_public_management [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization

The postwar growth in tertiary education came to an end. Due to demographic shifts the number of students matriculating stopped increasing. As long as the sector was generally growing there were a decent number of opportunities for those who really wanted a career in academia. But when the growth stopped it became a zero-sum game, intensifying competition between colleagues. Win at any cost.

Because the supply of academics have outpaced demand.

education funding cuts