I share many of the view with you, science should really be improving everyone's life, instead of just aiming for publications and satisfying grants needs.
I also work in the academia in the field of science, and often see students who were full of passion for research get ruined after a few years of the "commercialised academic life".
Studying science is hard, but understand what it can bring upon us can be easy~
witnessed this myself first hand.
Been there and done that too, hope we could make some changes starting from here~