[nadam]

"Perhaps if people bothered to learn a fraction of what is available in just the computer science or engineering departments of their university we wouldn't see the same old 50 year old technologies being reinvented again and again."

The problem is that for most people (be it salaryman or enterpreneur) knowing a lot of computer science (and other academic stuff) is irrelevant. I mean knowing the basics is good, but learning a lot of it is irrelevant compared to other things (connections, social skills, dealing with pressure, dealing with boredom, capacity to see through complex systems, luck, experience, talent (in fact different kinds of talents)). Even the companies which seem to prefer academic kind of knowledge in fact prefer (and test for) raw talent of some kind.

Of course if your goal is to do research, academy is extremely important. Otherwise (for example if your goal is financial independence) not that much (beyond the basics, but talented people learn the basics pretty quickly).