I met him right before the pandemic and I remember he did respond to my email around the time it was kicking off so I know that he does communicate to alums but this honestly might’ve been below his radar
Also, he and the rest of the administration were very sensitive to press in the traditional media outlets. Social media was mostly immaterial to them. There was a story in the LA times about Math 1a being too hard (for the audience, Math 1a is a "calculus" course that is mostly about real analysis and not that much about calculus), and that caused a big stir that I ended up getting involved with at one point, since I was part of the student government's "course concerns" group.
The current NYT article has already inspired a letter from the president.
You've got faculty calling it a major embarrassment[0] and alumni aligned 100% against this grift. One has to ask, if faculty and alumni (and I presume current students) don't want this program, then who is advocating for it? One can only assume the worst.
When I was a student, that outreach was mostly citizen science (a very caltech-appropriate form of outreach).
While the provost may have approved it, this whole thing is another example of administrators running roughshod over faculty (who are, admittedly, disinterested in this sort of thing). I do (hazily) recall that back when I was a frosh, there was some sort of professional program that focused on engineering management and was a joint effort with places like Hughes and The Aerospace Corporation. Given Caltech's long history with the Southern California aerospace industry, this is at least plausible. This was done through the Industrial Relations Center (page 21 here: https://campuspubs.library.caltech.edu/121/1/1992-1993.pdf)
I agree wrt outreach. It should be Watson lectures and setting up telescopes, etc. This isn't outreach, is an obvious money grab.
People at Caltech don't realize how much influence JPL has on how the school runs, but it is 3/4 of the annual budget of the organization.