[afridi]

I think a balance is needed. A lot of my friends in CS graduating after 4 years of college (at a number of schools including at UIUC) feel less confident going into the industry than people I know that have gone through developer bootcamps.

Theory is definitely important, but the number of hands-on/practical courses needs to be increased as well.

[eldavido]

Don't worry about it. People who get paid to assess the actual -- not perceived -- quality of tech talent for a living (hiring managers, bigco recruiters) aren't fooled by this. The mere amount of stamina it takes to complete an Illinois engineering degree is enough of a signal.

Your experience might be different if you're dealing with money guys with no operating experience who trust the Harvard/Stanford pedigree uber alles, second/third-tier startup founders who dropped out because they're "the next steve jobs" and would rather drop acid than finish their degrees, "journalists" writing schlok "content" for valleywag/techcrunch etc. without an iota of fact-checking, and other hilarious SV stereotypes that this area seems to attract in droves. Try not to let it get you down too much. There's more to life that the front page of Techcrunch.