I have thought a lot about this. The primary benefit of TAOCS is that it's self-contained and all written in the same voice/style. It's much higher quality tha

I have thought a lot about this. The primary benefit of TAOCS is that it's self-contained and all written in the same voice/style. It's much higher quality than a lot of other texts on the subjects it covers, but a given chapter is not necessarily that best text for the given topic. It would be really cool if there were a "TAOCS" elective offered every single semester, just for the sake of fun. I would love to teach a course like that. I think it would work really well for e.g., an honors program ("to get honors in the major, one option is to enroll in this course for 4 consecutive semesters") More generally, I think the policy that courses should use TAOCS where a chaper exists for the topic at hand would certainly increase the quality of courses at non-top CS programs (certainly, it would have at mine). But in general, there are often texts that do a better job at covering a topic. E.g., this is a really interesting chapter, but I think there are probably better introductory texts on SAT (entirely subjective, of course). Which is to say, if I know the area well then I will probably not use TAOCS. But if I don't then TAOCS is a safe choice.