I really liked the separation of the theory and higher learning from classes vs learning the hands-on real-world programming from summer and co-op jobs. Even before I had those, I was already a hobbiest programmer on my own time. The difference these days is that people go into CS/software development as a career job and expect a degree to prepare them for it. I'm all for effectiveness so it would be up to each institution, but hopefully they're not continually churning out programmers who would have been good to have 5 years ago.