You'd be shocked at how many bad schools exist. I graduated from a university that tried to drop "Data Structures and Algorithms" because it didn't translate well to the workplace, and that university is deemed to be okay for Computer Science in the UK. I ended up taking it, but a lot of other students in my class weren't happy. We even complained to the British Computer Society, as the Computer Science degree was accredited by them, but nothing came from it.
My university pushed Java down our throats whenever they could. We also spent a lot of time with Prolog and C, but Java was taught as if it was a perfect language for anything a developer could possibly want to do. I joined a Masters degree programme at a top ten university in the UK and I was blown away by the difference. The facilities were no better, the lecturers no better, and the students no better. The only real difference was the curriculum, and the administration. At bad schools the curriculum is focused on raising the hiring numbers and the adminisration deal with so many kids that they couldn't give a shit about their needs, whereas at good schools they try to stay true to the subject and those running the degree programme have done a good job, and will make things run smoothly.
I would say that students from bad universities probably end up just as good at programming as those from good universities. The big difference is how they cope when they leave their comfort zone. I'm a .NET developer and I've seen some students brought up in Java really struggle, which is fairly shocking when you consider the similarities between the Java language and C#. A good student from either will adapt either way.
My university pushed Java down our throats whenever they could. We also spent a lot of time with Prolog and C, but Java was taught as if it was a perfect language for anything a developer could possibly want to do. I joined a Masters degree programme at a top ten university in the UK and I was blown away by the difference. The facilities were no better, the lecturers no better, and the students no better. The only real difference was the curriculum, and the administration. At bad schools the curriculum is focused on raising the hiring numbers and the adminisration deal with so many kids that they couldn't give a shit about their needs, whereas at good schools they try to stay true to the subject and those running the degree programme have done a good job, and will make things run smoothly.
I would say that students from bad universities probably end up just as good at programming as those from good universities. The big difference is how they cope when they leave their comfort zone. I'm a .NET developer and I've seen some students brought up in Java really struggle, which is fairly shocking when you consider the similarities between the Java language and C#. A good student from either will adapt either way.