"On the flip side, I'm nearly two years into a part-time Computer Science degree, and the engineering content is about 5-10 years behind what the industry is doing. I haven't seen version control mentioned in a lecture once."
I smell a troll. Besides, it is not the goal of higher education to teach you the latest shiny thing that changes in a couple of years anyways, but to give you something more valuable.
It's not that unrealistic. At my university, to be a computer science major, first there are a couple gateway courses you have to take one after the other, which all other CS courses have as requirements, so your first year will be mostly math or general education courses. The first two introductory courses in computer science I took never mentioned version control. They talked about the programming language, how to use C++ with Makefiles, basic algorithms (e.g. binary search), and how to upload your homework assignments to the school's Linux server. They never talked about Git, or any other version control, though. It took until my Data Structures class to talk about Git, and only because the class uploaded homework through GitHub classroom (or whatever it's called).
Re that quote: Software Engineering is a tiny part of any Computer Science curriculum, and the content at my particular university is quite out-of-date. 5-10 years is being generous. Git and version control are absolutely not covered.
I would agree for different reasons. Software Eng. takes on a different meaning in the industry... unfortunately for some reason, because it seems to be somewhat different in other engineering fields. I think most companies hiring SEs really mean Product Engineers, or even Business Engineers (which I haven't heard but that title would make more sense). Therefore Comp Sci does not focus on any of the business aspects that are needed and expected for a career in most software companies.
There are two potential solutions, either Comp. Sci. starts teaching more of the business side, or create a new track for students that is called something like Software Product Engineering. That way CS students would continue on towards research in academia and other highly specialized roles, while the masses are trained on the relevant techcnical parts plus all the knowledge that is expected to create profit from software.
Fair enough. But they have done a fantastic job educating me about propositional logic, set theory, Turing Machines, algorithm design, etc. - actual computer science - and the theoretical side of software engineering.
My point is that this education alone would not have been sufficient to prepare me to be a productive junior developer building a website with a team of 10.
However, they are much more useful to me now, working towards very senior technical roles later in my career.
Software developers can be taught in bootcamps. Some of the higher quality bootcamps that filter out bad students have been very successful. They'll teach students to be good developers.
But computer science students get a more holistic view of how software and computers work. They have better fundamentals but when they first get a job, many of them don't even know the basics. Bootcamps will move faster and teach what the industry is using.
I think both routes are fine. Top students from either route will be better than the average regardless.
I think we need both, and thus why we have things like capstones and whatnot. And I see no problems sending students to good bootcamps for that matter. But see, particularly software engineering is much more than tools, languages, and whatnot. And as for CS, for instance the lack of proper education about ML, statistics, and math in general is behind many of today's problems, I'd argue.
I've actually seen a lot of CS students spend a summer at a coding bootcamp after they graduate. It boosts their practical knowledge and makes them productive from day one.
I smell a troll. Besides, it is not the goal of higher education to teach you the latest shiny thing that changes in a couple of years anyways, but to give you something more valuable.