Yes, I guess it's always been that way. My first job, at 16 yrs old, was as a lab technician. There were guys there with BSc, PhD in sight, earning less than my friend, a postman. Things are a little better now, but the research infrastructure is decaying. Still, let's look on the bright side - the UK should soon have more than enough psychologists and sociologists to figure out why the government is allowing it to happen. In the USA, the problem is different. There we see half the population, whilst avidly reaping the benefits of the worlds best applied science, claim that the universe was created 6000 yrs ago. Again, let's look on the bright side - that's about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue, so maybe they'll never make it stick.

"Time is what prevents everything from happening at once" - John Wheeler