[wildmanx]

> The problem is that what's employable isn't actually computer science, but trendy industry nonsense...

You may be going a bit hard on the industry. I see where you're coming from, having a long academic past myself and seeing there is a lot of BS in industry. But there is also a lot of meaningful things in industry and academia is sometimes a little too arrogant about that.

Given that you went back to graduate school and are likely a bit frustrated with industry, I can see why you have that stance, but neither extreme is good. Neither is everything in industry just trendy nonsense nor is everything in it the holy grail. There are real problems being solved in industry. That's what produces systems that people actually use, be it mobile phones or server infra or network gear or embedded systems, which after all is the whole point of all this. There is also a lot of trendiness and lots of people who just hack things and don't have a clue. It's not black-and-white. Similar with academia. There is a real benefit to the fundamentals being taught and researched in academia. And there is a lot of nonsense there too, tons of paper produced just to produce papers and get the next grant and stay employed. (If anything, the gatekeeping in academia is way worse than in industry.)

Both worlds have their place and it's sad to see disparaging comments from either side about the other one.