[kelleyk]

I think that even the "brand-name" CS schools have this problem. Most of our students aren't /really/ going to be practicing computer science (heck, I don't, in industry... not in the purest sense); many of them will be writing software for a company. (Well, or they'll go work in finance, which is a whole different topic.)

While I definitely agree that (as with pretty much any complex skill) the only way to learn is by doing, over and over again, our undergraduates frequently go out into the world having only taken one or two classes that include any sort of nontrivial software development.

Now, these students are largely smart people, and they figure it out---but after two or three years in the workforce. I've heard this from other people, too, who have way more experience with the subject by virtue of having been around longer.

It's sort of an identity crisis thing: are we trying to produce computer scientists, or are we trying to produce software engineers? Neither is a wrong answer; they're just very different goals.