I think you're being too hard on the University. The reality is that Universities are full of a spectrum of brilliant people, some of whom become superstars, some of whom don't. Some of them work really hard and spin their wheels, go down blind allies, or just miss their luck. From a University perspective, how should it evaluation its faculty? How does it measure the output of minds that are pretty much by definition beyond simple comprehension? How do you measure brilliance when you cannot possibly absorb their output due to the sheer size of it? There isn't a good answer. But the machine cranks on. It makes mistakes. It looks like an unfortunate one here, and I'm glad that her persistence paid off. But there are thousands of stories like this, some of them with ground-breaking top-notch scientists in there, and some not. If you're sniffing around for a villain here, I don't think you'll find it.
