I wouldn't call it stock, but Italians do indeed use pasta water in many of their sauces. Makes sense because it's basically just starchy water, which helps to bind the sauce.
That said, you generally don't need more than one or two cups of it, the rest is still thrown out.
That's a bad comparison because it's generally easier to scale up production lines than it is to increase university capacity.
The most expensive part of product development is the R&D, because that's where all the university grads go. Manufacturing, on the other hand, can often be automized, and generally only requires basic education. University educators, on the other hand, usually require at least a PhD, and class sizes are limited not only by the number of teaching staff, but also available classrooms, dorm rooms, and, depending on the subject, lab space, all of which is very expensive.
That sounds kind of abusive, ngl