I think it varies a lot from university to university (plus they are very young people).

But generally, since moving to Europe, I see that a lot of new grads don’t have that foundational knowledge as you mention. I’ve even had other colleagues complain that university recruiting was terrible because people had zero idea about things like operating systems. My feeling is that unis started targeting skills that were required in the job market instead of foundational knowledge.

In contrast, my uni was very “systems” focused and didn’t really focus on skills employers were looking for at the time.