CS departments are degree mills that still promise a chair

Enrolments are the business. Faculty jobs are the brochure. Most of the students in the room are not training for a chair, and the department still talks as if the PhD is the point of the degree.

Industry will pay them more than you can, sooner than you will admit. Pretending otherwise just makes the ones who stay feel like they failed a contest they never entered.

Who is the undergraduate degree actually for?