That example is pure gold. We can finally resort to something that something different than the typical toilet paper one.
I agree with your opinion around universities lagging what is needed. Most economics teachers I've met have spent most of their carrers in the hamster ball of academia and subsidized, public universities (without having been "tested and validated by the free market", as Saifedean likes to say). It shouldn't come as a surprise that they might not all that good at designing and executing degrees that prepare students for the private sector.
I think there is also a problem of students not being critical enough and not acting as customers. I like to remark in my classes that I work for them, not the other way around. They always have these smirks of "yeah sure lol". My opinion is that it has to do with the subsidized tuition costs, either because the university is public and students pay a part of the cost or nothing, or because access to cheap financing that will only bite you in years or decades puts the burden in the future. My feeling is that this makes both (1) people join blindly without deep motivation or intent, just because it's "the thing to do" and (2) people not taking their studies seriously enough (and here I mean: if you are serious about investing your time and money into this, you would send the university to hell the moment they would make you lose your time or you felt the degree was pointless, just as you would do with any other service where there is a bigger culture of "customer is king").