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75 years ago was right in the middle of McCarthyism, when universities were not only taking federal GI Bill money hand over fist, but instituting loyalty pledges and political review boards for staff and students. I don't think anyone needed to contemplate theoretical financial levers when they had much more straightforward examples immediately at hand.

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Tuition money doesn't fund research, so how is the GI Bill relevant?

It's an example of universities accepting federal funds. I didn't actually know the breakdown of federal university funding in the 1950s, so I had to look it up. For separately budgeted research, federal funds were ~70% of dollars according to a 1954 NSF survey. For total expenditures, they were 42%. A bit over half of that went to medical and agricultural research.

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