you're missing the hugely important point that most universities also don't understand computer science, or else knowingly lie about it to increase enrollment

you're missing the hugely important point that most universities also don't understand computer science, or else knowingly lie about it to increase enrollment Not at all. It's pretty central to my point that both we in the industry and the academics who teach us are mixing up the terms and not paying heed to the "science" in "computer science" (and I said as much in the comment). I agree that the starry-eyed kid who wants to write apps and games would likely be turned away if he was faced with actual computer science instead of what is sold as such: If you showed him TAoCP and said "This is an example of broad-based computer science", he'd get blurry-eyed instead, because there is no visible relationship between one end of that desire and the other. But that might not be a bad thing if we get our stuff together and fix our expectations and our terminology: An 11 year old tinkering with electronics in her bedroom, or mixing up colours and smelly stuff with her "my first chemistry set", or dragging her family fossil hunting in the hills is not doing "science", but she knows that "science" is that way, and at the end of a degree course in science--assuming she doesn't stay in academia--she gets a job as a lab technician, not a scientist; much of that role might actually involve sitting in front of a computer processing statistics and analytics anyway, rather than mixing up fun stuff in a test tube (which, after all, is what she was originally passionate about). The technician stuff is not what she wanted when she was 11, but it's still a part of the journey, and the science education is what sets her up for later participation in chemical engineering work or even some actual science (if she's very driven or fortunate).