[arcturus17]

As a former student of CS I could pick hundreds of examples of algorithms and data structures, which are now baked into the standard libraries of all programming languages, and therefore in web apps, which were invented in universities. Same with AI - industry is now collecting the fruits, but the groundwork research was absolutely indispensable and very few in industry were doing it until FB or Google set up their research institutes (and we could have another debate on whether those are academic, industrial or somewhere in-between).

Yes, I picked those two examples for the effect or as a reduction to the absurd (not a strawman), because going only by the immediate or tangible value of what one "builds" (science isn't even built, but rather discovered) is not a good way to dismiss academia.