Its definitely money, but its not really competition, and more of a scam.
Universities have no vested interest in education of students - their money comes most often from government loans at the time of attendance. Once the student graduates, they have their money, they don't care how successful the graduate is in the industry.
As such, if you ever want to see massive education reform, all that needs to happen is make the state colleges run their own bank system and give out education loans, instead of the government adjacent banks. You would see massive changes overnight.
"they don't care how successful the graduate is in the industry."
Is this really the case for software development/ engineering? I would think having lots of lackluster applicants would tank undergrad rankings for us news, that having successful career fairs and starting salaries are in fact a priority. (Granted, these universities care more about research.)
So many people don't check those things before going to college that it effectively doesn't matter. The best colleges will get more applicants than they can handle, and everyone who is rejected will go to other colleges. You'd have to be really, really bad to get a reputation for failing your students.
And the institution doesn't care, but many of the teachers do care, so they do what they can to help the students.
Also, they cook the books. I went to a college that supposedly had a high 90% placement rate. But what they actually counted is if the person had a job soon after they graduated, no matter what field it was in. Because most people who had to pay those tuition prices needed to be earning money to pay them back already, they took whatever job they could.
I called them on it and they claimed that I was refusing to follow their advice and that's why I couldn't get a job in the industry. In reality, they were just horrifically bad at job searches. The interviews they sent me to were for horrible companies, and even then I didn't even get a second interview.
They claimed it was because I refused to follow their advice of hand-writing a note to give to the secretary to give to give to the interviewer. I informed them that seeing my handwriting was a massive turn-off, but that continued to be the career counselor's excuse as to why I couldn't get a job.
My dad ended up going in and yelling at both the counselor and the head of the head of the school, which changed their attitude considerably. They were still completely ineffectual, though.
Career fairs are reflective of general job market. As long as companies do see career fairs as a viable recruitment path they do participate, even if for the sole reason of poaching "the best". Companies do not really care (at least as first-order effect. Of course there are second-order considerations) whether the grey mass is sub-par or completely unemployable. On the other hand, as long as an institution is not notorious for producing unemployable graduates they also do not really care (again, as first order effect) whether the lowest rated classmates are merely slightly below average or "complete morons".
Why not? It's a zero-sum game as in the number of students in a given year is +/- fixed. I see it as a competition to attract students to apply AND eventually graduate
Universities have no vested interest in education of students - their money comes most often from government loans at the time of attendance. Once the student graduates, they have their money, they don't care how successful the graduate is in the industry.
As such, if you ever want to see massive education reform, all that needs to happen is make the state colleges run their own bank system and give out education loans, instead of the government adjacent banks. You would see massive changes overnight.