The ROI on Columbus' voyage was in time measured in centuries.

Trade schools don't teach the math and theory that can turn a practitioner into an expert.

Development/CS/programming is unique in that the design and implementation are so close to each other; the perfect design is, in fact, perfect code.

Language design.
File system design.
Assembly (yes, it still does matter).
Graph theory.
Algorithmic theory.

There used to be no chemistry. Mixing chemicals skills were bundled into alchemy.

(PS: Snark aside, you're wrong. CS was bundled in with EE, or math, or even arts and sciences. But MIS was added later for the business majors for whom "math was hard.")

Or math. Or compiler or OS theory. Or language theory. Or algorithmic theory. All of which makes for a far, far better coder.

The thing about CS/CE is that it is one place where the product and the design are very close together; the distinction isn't so sharp - there's a lot of gray area.

Often the blueprint resembles (and becomes) the product; pseudo code and algorithms are directly translatable to code.

This is very different from the equations that determine materials strength becoming a bridge.

Difference with your examples is that they don't organize them that way to save money; they do it because they think that is the way to do it.

Which is fine.

It is also a far cry from cutting bits out of the CS curriculum to add 2M to the pool so it can be sent over to the football team.

Horseshit. It all comes from the same well.

Education is the long term investment that always is obvious in it's payoffs, but very hard to put an exact numeric value to.

But - skip education a generation, and watch what happens.

That's really mangling language.

If the majority lose money, then, pretty much by definition, many do not make money. Some, or a few make money. Not many.

Made me so mad I lost control of my grammar.

College football does not make money for education. There's a lot of money flowing, but almost none really ever goes to education.

Why should we train our next generation to code when our MBA is taught that quarterly profits are maximized by outsourcing everything? To hell with the long term; let's just grab everything we can now and screw the future.

... is that we've allowed the power to shift from the instrument of the people: the Government; which may be flawed, but is still the instrument of the people, to the private, hereditary fiefdoms of the corporations and Wall Street, which now enjoy all the advantages of a feudal hierarchy without any of the responsibility that at least the oath of fealty attempted to enforce.

Two results of this:

1. It destroys free enterprise and competition.

2. It creates a system where those who create can only do so in limited venues, and for a limited time before they're thrown on the rubbish heap. And those who create get an even smaller share of the rewards (no more tenure because you built a ten million dollar product).

Really, really sad state of affairs is this post industrial feudalism