I did all kinds of crap related to physics, chemistry, calculus, and the arts. I'd much rather have done those kinds of courses than the (almost completely) useless things. There is definitely credit room, just a wrong focus. Also being able to skip early level courses for more advanced ones would have been nice (I challenged a few anyway, but they were expensive and still consumed some time.) Then maybe I would have enjoyed CS and not dropped out.

This is another one of those interesting areas to explore in CS education that comes up a lot in conversation. Of course, there is no one path for everyone and there are many people who would thrive and reach greater levels of proficiency and success outside of this sort of environment.

For my bit, I received a 2-year degree in a programming-centric degree program (systems programming) and my 4-year degree in a CS-focused degree program, which placed a much heavier emphasis on theory and models. Coming from my first college, I was upset over having to 'repeat' a lot of subject areas, only to find out that under a different focus these courses offered a better perspective over areas I was missing understanding in.

Looking at the two years I worked as a TA and the time I have spent assisting in an applied programming student organization, I've come across many students who have complained about not being able to skip ahead to the more advanced materials. Several complain vociferously about having to take the theory and logic courses. Others complain about the course in low-level programming (C -- which is not even low-level) or systems programming. Most of the time that I've seen, this is a result of simply not understanding the concepts as result of a lack of foundational knowledge. Mathematics is an area continually complained about amongst the newer students as a requirement for 'programming'.

I've worked with students who wanted to push straight to the senior-level courses while having no real understanding of basic data structures, fundamental algorithms, core programming structure concepts (ie. have never learned/used recursion), or even had any exposure to taking the time to structure their thoughts before diving into the code.

I've always been more of the 'renaissance man' when it comes to education, but I've learned to appreciate and I do support the balancing that universities engage in, in order to provide a core CS framework for their degree programs. University degrees should not be able gaining the information needed to go out and program, but should be focused more on these topics involving theory and the mathematical underpinnings of the field. This should involve some levels of useless, pedantic academia.

While we do not offer the ability to challenge courses in this department, one area I do highly push students to get involved in is laboratory research with professors. We had two undergrads with no prior systems education build and write the drivers for custom robots recently, after they came in looking to get involved in such a project. Many professors, in my limited experience, are eager to see students who are looking for additional challenges in their studies and are only too happy to provide additional experience in desired areas for them.

I should explain - I'm in the UK and, at least when I was at University, there was very little that was optional in CS course I did (at least for 3 years of the 4). So the class given by the Electrical Engineering department on mucking about with stuff like UARTs was as required as the Lambda Calculus course - all CS students had to pass both.

[Amusingly, networking was one of the optional 4th year classes - but in the pre-intraweb days nobody seem to regard it as very important...]

I very much enjoyed the 2 logic classes I took through the philosophy department. My school used to offer an interdisciplinary major between Computer Science and Philosophy. Unfortunately not any more.