Seriously, who teaches this course, the "Cracking the Coding Interview" author?

Why is it not embarrassing for Caltech’s admission department and algorithms courses?

I agree it is embarrassing for Caltech as well. They are one of the biggest engineering schools in North America not Greendale Community College, this kind of class is beneath them. No major research university should be offering a course like this.

The Caltech course on algorithms is probably focused more on mathematical proofs of correctness and runtime bounds, rather than the implementation details required to pass coding interviews

If someone cannot code an algorithm they certainly don’t understand it.

I'd argue it's pragmatic