https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=13098598
A critique along those lines which suggests KRC and Miranda which are in the same vein as SML.
When I was in college in the late 1980s, CS was not perceived as the moneymaking career it is today. Accordingly the kids who went into CS were typically the nerds and hackers who truly loved the field.
Many kids now perceive CS as a safe, lucrative career option akin to becoming a doctor or lawyer. It attracts many students who are smart but perhaps not as intrinsically excited about the field. The universities adjusted their curricula to what these students care about: Less beautiful theory, and more practical training.
A similar thing happened in statistics. At one time it was hardcore stats nerds. Now "data science" has brought a ton more people into the field and the teaching methods have changed dramatically.
Specifically, it seems to me that colleges becoming more vocational and colleges becoming more expensive are both natural outcomes of the neoliberalisation of all things. I am aware that some students now rationalise their educational investments with the logic you describe above, but I think it's a post-hoc rationalisation.
You can get a good job without going to college, and you can get a good education without paying a gazillion bucks.
A side point, but calling it "vocational" seems a bit euphemistic too. Learning carpentry is a vocation. Getting a business degree is not equivalent to learning carpentry. I might say colleges have become commercialised, rather.
Community colleges are the cheapest colleges, yet the most vocational.
The most expensive colleges are the Liberal Arts Colleges and the Ivy League, which are the least vocational.
I'd argue that SML (or derivative thereof) would make for a better teaching language, for both the lambda calculus aspect and the type theory aspect.