[netsharc]

Is it any different nowadays? AFAIK the goal isn't to advance the field, but to prove to the people giving you the Bachelor/Master's degree that you're able to create a "paper". Some theses stand out, but most of them are probably quite boring.

[StefanBatory]

It seems to me like their tasks were way heavier. For us, most of us did basic CRUDs with some implemention twist, and our papers were your standard: do a short theoretical introduction to the domain, make a few UML diagrams, explain how it works + some code examples, then testing.