I am also taking a course similar to this at my own university, actually using the same text-book. I guess the knowledge and skills gained from this course only

I am also taking a course similar to this at my own university, actually using the same text-book. I guess the knowledge and skills gained from this course only apply to a small subset of problems, specifically those requiring some heavier theoretical / algorithmic thinking before implementation. While this only goes over a few algorithms in the chapters I have studied, it gives a very strong background which I'm sure would help in any other studies of algorithms you would pursue. Just by being introduced to the basic notation and language of some of the mathematics, I've found that I can read on different algorithms (in context of an academic paper / report) that I would like to implement with much more ease.