All of this makes sense if you only pay attention to what universities say they are instead of how they function in society. Functionally, companies and students treat university as some combination of trade school and expensive credentialing system. A bachelor’s degree is both a signifier and predictor of class. They are expensive, and every office job requires one at a minimum.
The vast majority of CS students aren’t interested in the minutia of theory, they’re interested in reliably getting a job in a field that will let them have a family. And schools know it too, which is why a degree can command and justify a six figure cost. All of the saccharine scholarly platitudes aside, the cost of learning about Homer or first year calculus keeps going up every year.
Forcing students to pay for their own vocational training isn’t stupid and short sighted at all. It’s a form of industry-wide tacit collusion [1] and it’s working.