[eksemplar]

In Denmark we have a two universities that almost exclusively do project based learning. Basically students are put in groups and attached a mentor who is responsible for teaching them CS.

To this is coupled traditional courses in basic math/algorithms/scientific theory.

These lines produce candidates that are wasted supperior to our traditional universities. Well, if you need them to actually work with CS in the real world, I’m an employeer not a scientist, so I have no idea if they produce better candidates for research. But for real world jobs, these kinds of candidates are the only ones coming out of the universities that I can safely put in a position and expect to see them become productive after 1-3 months.

Traditional candidates take 6 months of mentoring before they start earning their salaries. They’ve often never even deployed a project in anything resembling a real world project. They’ve never worked in teams, and simply don’t know how to do so. They don’t know how to communicate with non-IT people. And so on.

As I said, project based teaching may not produce better CS candidates in terms of how good they are at CS, but it does produce candidates that can deliver a finished quality product on time.

[madsbuch]

I think this is right on: From the school and directly into consulting. I completely agree that these people are far superior on the work place. But hey, who ever decided that an academic computer scientist is a better hire than software engineer did something horribly wrong.

The problem is, as you mention, _universities_ are not, and should not, be geared towards the industry. That's why we have the engineering programs, which are. They are expertly taught all the Microsoft technologies completely as the mainstream Danish consultancy expect from there employees.

Furthermore, I reckon that "work with CS" for you means implementing Sitecore websites, do a bit of C#, and maybe proramming a Typescript webapp? To me those tasks have nothing to do with CS. They require no knowledge of typesystems, complexity theory, etc. (Keep in mind that CS on Danish universities is datalogi, which is the academic discipline and does not directly translate into CS as the american program)

[Bizarro]

That sounds great. If you're not practicing the theory you're learning, then it's just slipping away into oblivion.

I've always said that traditional computer science programs should really be split up into the "theory" part of computer science, and software engineering curriculum (the practice).

[pdm55]

"wasted supperior" Did you mean "way superior" or, better yet, "far superior"?

[rdiddly]

Vastly superior?

[nextos]

So do you think Aalborg students are better than DTU's?

[eksemplar]

CS and SE are different lines, I think most DTU students would fall under project based learning.

I think Aalborg CD students are far superior to students from Aarhus or KU, but only as production ready candidates that can work in a team, not necessarily for R&D.

[nextos]

What about IT University Copenhagen?

I'm curious as I graduated from DTU several years ago. But since I'm not Danish and I moved back to Oxbridge I lack insights on the different universities out there.

DTU was a very nice theory + project-based learning setup. IMHO, along with Chalmers and a few others, a really underrated option. It was quite heavy and rigorous on the theory side of things.