I assure you that UX designers (the real ones, at least) would love to get out of their ivory towers.
In every job I have had, I have begged to get out and talk to users before doing anything else. However, that idea makes folks in charge nervous. It's expensive. It might reveal secrets(?). The users might get annoyed.
One of the biggest issues is that time spent on research is time when the developers can't be developing. That seems to trump everything.