Regarding finding the higgs boson, regardless of whether you agree that it's what they're actually doing, the main people actually building the first quantum computer are D-Wave, a private company.
citation please? First, what does quantum computers have to do with finding the higgs boson? Second, is D-wave not standing on the shoulders of decades of academic research in designing their computer?
D-Wave are making more exaggerated press release claims. Universities have better working quantum computers (i.e. any at all)
They've got some serious-business Quantum Computing experiments at NIST, as well.