Anecdata: Mine did (CS, Manchester, 92-95). First year a certain amount of hardware was mandatory, second and onwards was optional (and I opted out.) (Many peo

Anecdata: Mine did (CS, Manchester, 92-95). First year a certain amount of hardware was mandatory, second and onwards was optional (and I opted out.) (Many people opted in because it gave you a chance to be lectured by Steve Furber and later work with him on 3rd year projects, IIRC.)