So many students, it seems, are grade-hounds that try too hard to workaround topics they find difficult or uninteresting.

Sorry but, real world problems like foreign-policy practitioners have to encounter on the job don't respect _any_ boundaries, let alone boundaries about what topics one knows/doesn't-know/doesn't-have-to-know. For Christ's sake, these students were majoring in "Science, _Technology_ and International Affairs."

They had some coursework where they encountered a bit of programming and some hardware configuration, SO WHAT? It's good for them.

Now, if we can get computer science students to wet their feet in some public-policy...