> I would imagine that a comp sci department where they never reach a point where the "rubber meets the road" is not worth the trouble.

...unless your rubber has already met your own personal road long ago. I, personally, learned everything practical I needed to know about programming long before I stepped into a CS class, mostly from self-teaching and the web; I only took CS to "straighten out" my theoretical knowledge. I would have loved a CS department with no computers installed (except perhaps for interactive debugging after it's already clear that you can express yourself in pseudocode.)