When I was a student in Crete, the nearby CSD was a gorgeous example of doing both competently. They had rigorous theory courses (like mandatory DS, Algos, log

When I was a student in Crete, the nearby CSD was a gorgeous example of doing both competently. They had rigorous theory courses (like mandatory DS, Algos, logic, compilers etc) as well as hardcore applied stuff. Side-knowledge like source control, Unix systems and utilities, editors/IDEs were supposed to be picked by students themselves with the help of lab TAs, because assignments were to be delivered over ssh through specific channels etc. Sometimes, the quirky teacher would not give precise instructions for certain projects, but tell the students to find the documentation in the departmental network directories for the class and decrypt them with their ID numbers. So the students would go on to crawl the unix and windows nodes for the relevant info. A "good" (7.5+/10) graduate from the CSD of the University of Crete could do rigorous algorithmic analysis, hack system stuff in C and time in Verilog. OOP was hot at the time, so it also meant students were expected to produce significant amounts of code in Java and C++. Specializations abounded: networks and OSs, theory, arithmetic and analysis, hardware (including VLSI etc. at the undergraduate level, with labs). I won't even go into the graduate stuff. And although this curriculum was quite demanding and onerous (the number of projects in each class was quite crazy), it was just something students dealt with. Heck, this was not even the most famous CS school in Greece: the elite hackers mostly went to the National Technical University of Athens. I am not sure what the situation is now, but at least at the time, graduates were ready both for academic and serious industry careers. It is a 4 year curriculum, though many if not most students went on for 5 or 6 years. Of course, free.