> Is the goal of a PhD really to get to tenure? Just a minor annoyance over calling people who chose to get a PhD knowing they would leave academia upon receiving it, drop outs.

Times change. 30 years ago (the period in question here), if you got a CS PhD, your only options were to join an academic department or one of the few industrial labs (Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, etc.). Tenure-track positions were extremely hard to come by unless you were either (a) a rockstar; or (b) in a very practical field like OS or Databases or Networking. A friend of mine sent out 100 resumes, and got 98 rejections. :D