That's not a very good comparison, though, because the person isn't usually carrying out the algorithm. Every engineering discipline is concerned with cost containment (energy-efficient appliances, bridges that require minimal repair, satellites with as little mass as possible). This is what time and space efficiency are for computer programs: cost reduction. Sometimes the costs are incurred by the manufacturer (efficiency of the Google web crawler), and sometimes by the consumer (efficiency of the OS), but it's still cost containment.
Now, if the programmer were actually carrying out algorithms, this comparison would be entirely sensible. They're not. They're just trying to make them use as few resources as possible.
The point is that this perspective is missing the enormous creative potential of the computer -- just as pen science is missing the enormous creative potential of the pen.
I guess I just don't see why you need an education in that. Civil engineers can design bridges that are quite nice to look at. Mechanical engineers can build very elegant machines that can be quite expressive. To my knowledge, education in those fields is still overwhelmingly about creating something that satisfies the specific requirements.
