In the spirit of what you're saying - it's possible ten people will be taught undergrad level math and only one will use it - but economically, that one person'

In the spirit of what you're saying - it's possible ten people will be taught undergrad level math and only one will use it - but economically, that one person's added production value could pay for the education of all ten and then some. The article speaks about Sputnik and one of the world's richest men, mathemetician and retired hedge fund manager Jim Simons notes that he is one of the first students to have benefited from the post-Sputnik STEM student grants. He also mentioned how many people in the US were getting doctorates in mathematics in the year Sputnik went up - I'm looking at the list of names right now and it is much less than 300. So the additional NSF funding etc. that paid for his doctorate resulted in the billions his hedge fund made.