In other words, it made more sense to 'frontload' hardthought and pondering so one was prepared [for whatever may come].
People also thought aqueducts were the best way to move water for thousands of years.
They still do because they still are? I'm hard pressed to think of a better way to move water than creating a gently sloped channel(this includes any pipelines that don't use pumps, by the way) for it to follow from where it is to where you need it. Many places that don't have sufficient local groundwater are still supplied by aqueducts to this day. If you have to pump it, then you're paying for the channel and the energy, which is worse than just using gravity.
And gravity-feed systems are the best way to move large amounts of water. That's even how nature works, and nature moves much more water than humans do.
University impact on careers in the 1980s was materially different than now, and that is still "modern education".
Opposing the AI impact on universities is not equivalent to opposing modern water infrastructure, it's more akin to being opposed to a new water pipe material that is shown to improve flow but have adverse health effects.
Numerical methods, however, would require at least minimal computing hardware.
I think there should be a guiding principle of using the least amount of tech in teaching any subject, just like principle of least privilege in cybersecurity.