Now, imagine if the faculty president thought "hmm, I bet we can save a bunch if we do remote teaching. We'll get super large interactive displays in every classroom and we'll have faculty in [some country] teach our students. We'll save millions!"
[1]http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/UCSF-to-outsource...
Slippery slope, if you outsource/fully digitize the teachers...administration comes next.
All the Beltway Bandits (DC consulting companies) know how to play the game, to what degree they play it is the only question. It's unfortunate that they game the system but the rules are set up to encourage it.
For a longer argument, see Adam Smith, "The Wealth of Nations" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations).
For one-off projects, all you're doing is spending a bunch of money training people, who will then mostly likely move to places where there are long-term jobs.
Investing in the creation of new industries might be a good endeavor for a government, but it should be dictated by a strategy, not by its occasional needs.
We also have a local train manufacturing industry. But end up buying from China...
Recently our government outsourced some naval ship building outside the country at the last moment after having expressed they were going to have them locally built. The reason for the switch was cost. To shave a million or two off the price of a many hundred million dollar project they decided to completely remove our local economy from the benefactors.
Private projects? Do what you like. Global times. But a governments role is to grow the economy and welfare of its people, public works are excellent ways to stimulate that.