That's a really complicated topic, of course. CS is in an interesting spot, in terms of how people perceive it and what students expect from it. On one extrem

That's a really complicated topic, of course. CS is in an interesting spot, in terms of how people perceive it and what students expect from it. On one extreme, people see CS as a kind of trade school housed in a research university, teaching only what is useful on the job. Some people see CS as professional degree, kind of like law - you must teach theory for students to understand the field, but in the end, you're producing practicing lawyers, not abstract thinkers. And then, at the other end of the distribution, you find people who see CS as an academic field, a branch of scholarship, where the question "what percentage of programmers need to understand compilers" would be akin to asking "what percentage of math majors who become actuaries use real analysis?".