I mean if we're being honest, most of CS studying (as practiced) was a waste of time anyway.

The S fell short in actual reality for the most part, as it was merely a hiring requirement. A hiring requirement that didn't even make sense, because the skillset of academic CS only marginally overlaps with the skillset one wants to hire for.

Material engineering at least for the most part has actual real-world applications where one can push humanity further. CS (as practiced, not necessarily the idea of real CS but the CS we got due to it being used as a hiring filter) for the most part is just self-referential spinning with mostly unclear results.

There is real impressive work being done in that field, of course, but I'd argue that the majority of it over the last decade or so at least was just performative nonsense.

Maybe by again allocating new resources to other fields, what hides under the label CS can become more pure actual CS again. I think that would also be a much less miserable experience for everyone involved.