The culture of CS departments at some universities before the tech boom was also deliberately antithetical to almost all of the things that people now mention a

The culture of CS departments at some universities before the tech boom was also deliberately antithetical to almost all of the things that people now mention as being great about university. * Courses designed to fail out many students * Courses designed to extremely theoretical and impractical because teachers found them fun to teach * Making the subject inaccessible to as many people as possible When I went to uni in the UK I didn't study CS (now senior dev at a large US tech company) because of the above, the subject had the highest fail rate, had the most unpleasant faculty, and had the highest rate of unemployment after graduation of any subject (this was a top 5 CS uni that only took people with top grades). It is great if people got something from their experience but this isn't how it goes for most people. And, from working with many people who have CS degrees, you do still see issues: poor communication skills, poor business understanding, often have significant trouble prioritizing work because of the previous two issues, etc. In other words, some can code (even there, grads come out...not great) but a CS course is usually not a comprehensive education to work anyway. I am not sure what represents comfort zone more than the way most universities teach any subject.