[BoxFour]

Universities never kept up with current practices and to be honest I don’t really think it’s their job to.

Universities aren’t vocational schools. An undergraduate education can, at best, teach you how to learn complex topics independently and give you foundational knowledge you can build upon later whether you’re going into industry, pursuing a PhD, or doing something unrelated.

The place for you to learn “practical” software development is an internship or an entry-level role, assisted with a lot of self-directed learning that hopefully university made possible for you.

[j45]

Universities left liberal arts to pursue the STEM funding and also cover vocational schools.

They also universally advertise themselves for many programs that are current.

The "teaching you how to think" part isn't out of line at all, however, applying it in the real world has to be taken relative to what students are explicitly told before registering in university as to the outcomes they will achieve.

[ghaff]

Sortof. Top research universities are mostly not vocational schools. But they do mostly figure on you picking up, say, Python on your own alongside the algorithms classs (and a ton of basic mechanical stuff).

I was a TA in grad school and did some tutoring and some students just didn't have the math basics they needed. I could help with a few things but couldn't really teach remedial high school math.