Sure, like I said they leave the students to figure it out on their own time. Independent studies, electives, and hobby-coding, 2/3 of that is completely up to the student...
Umm... no. In all of those cases, you ask the profs and other students for advice and ideas, just like you ask your coworkers when something is stumping you or you want a second opinion or sanity check. That's why they're there. They're not there to drill you on C++ syntax that'll change in 5 years anyway, and which you can look up in a book.
...and that's just the second half of a decent program, the first is even worse. What value does even a decent school really offer? Everyone that isn't utterly destitute already has what's practically the totality of human knowledge at their fingertips via the internet and a search engine, aside from a stamped piece of paper and a meatspace forum to meet with people passionate about the same things, what is it that a decent curriculum offers beyond that?
For most of the 20th century, academic libraries made a gigantic chunk of the totality of human knowledge available to anybody with a library card. What we found was that while a few people are freaky-capable autodidacts, 95+% of people are totally useless without some kind of guidance. College is, for most people, the process of getting that guidance - learning how to teach yourself stuff, how best to evaluate new knowledge*, and how to integrate that information into what you're doing, after you leave college.
*including when and why to dismiss something as bunk, which, if you follow politics or pop culture, you have probably realized a lot of people are rubbish at.
Maybe you're some kind of superhuman who doesn't need that. But you still got 4 years of kicking around ideas with a bunch of other smart young people, and a crapton of professional opportunities because of all the networking and internships you did... right?
Either way, employers aren't stupid - they know that a new developer on a complex project
(like, hello, you now are a Windows kernel dev. This code was written in 1996. Fix the bugs without breaking anything.) will need time to get up to speed. The n00b-hiring-manager and Intern-Sword-of-Damocles at my current job generally figures about a year before a new hire is making useful contributions. Anybody who can quickly teach themselves stuff by reading source code and design docs, instead of needing hand-holding, is OK in his book, but that's a skill in itself, and it requires practice - practice you get in college, when the profs stop spoon-feeding some time sophomore year.
Any hiring manager who thinks that college grads are supposed to emerge from the creche, fully formed and as capable as senior developers? That's going to be an unreasonable asshole boss and is probably not somebody you want to work for.
The way I see it universities do provide a service to employers by filtering out the best and most dedicated from the rest;
Depends on the school. Are you familiar with the "how many ____ students does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" jokes? Every state has their list, right?
If the answer to the joke is "none, because nobody is in _____ after dark" or "10 - one to hold it in place and nine to drink until the room spins" then congrats: you're at a blue-collar or urban state university like the one I'm attending at the moment. These schools will hire as many currently employed software devs as they can afford - which is not enough - to teach students what they need to know to do their job. But even then, there's a
time limit on the amount of stuff they can cover in detail - so they are giving you steps 1-4, and hoping you can figure out 5-18 on your own. The other students tend to be uninspiring working stiffs, and it's infectious - it's very likely that you will not feel pressure to excel or self-motivate, but get steered on a sort of "happy path" to graduation, at which point you will have a mediocre skill level in a variety of areas, but not be an expert at anything.
If the answer to the joke is something to the effect of "One. They hold it in place and the world revolves around them" or "Two. One to change the lightbulb and one to knock the ladder out from under him." then congratulations on getting into a highly selective program. These universities have CS departments full of faculty who enjoy differential calculus more than sex, and who publish papers on esoteric stuff that's 10 years minimum from a useful commercial application. They view undergrads as the larval form of potentially useful graduate assistants, not someone to whom they owe something as vulgar as "vocational training." These schools tend to have high selectivity, really good rankings, big football programs, fancy campuses, and expensive tuition. Unfortunately, they're also the schools that "everybody knows" are really good so you should totally go there, and damn the cost. The upside is that you're surrounded by crazy-smart people, and you might get inspired. (If you don't, you'll probably flunk out junior year.)
Don't even get me started on those shitty private liberal arts schools. The rare few are as good as the best, but most of them are crap.
There are of course a multitude of schools in between the extremes as well. Hence, selecting the right school for the kind of education and future you want* is very, very important.
*and at a price you can afford
Also, please remember that the last thing most people in academia are interested in, is performing a "service" to employers.
...but even if they're necessary to get in the industry...
They're not absolutely necessary.... but it helps. (I got a job in software dev with a music degree, because I impressed the right people, but it was mostly by accident.)
...they're hardly sufficient...
No. I hate to be negative here, but I have worked with some interns in their junior and senior years who were scary-capable. Is it possible your school just sucked?
...and so they ultimately provide little of real value...
Again: scary-capable interns. I shit you not.
...to most of the people that sign away a fifth to a third of their lives in debt payments to them.
Ah. There's the rub.
My comments above about selecting the "right" school (not necessarily the "best" school) and concerning yourself with cost from the get-go? Learned that shit the hard way. Student Loans are a problem, yes - the entire system with college applications, recruiting, tuition, funding, loans, rankings, etc., is pretty screwed up, and is basically one big marketing orgy. Very few of the people whose job it is to counsel high school students on these matters are effective. In many cases because they are actually not permitted to tell you the truth, lest they discourage you from pursuing a college degree at all.*
*Teacher: You like cars? Have you considered a career in auto repair? There's a community college down the street with an ASE program. I teach there two nights a week.
Students: Oh... umm... thanks?
Students' Parents: Are you saying my son/daughter is stupid? That they can't go to a real college? You fucking asshole!
Repeat ad infinitum, replacing "auto repair" with any other semi-skilled or skilled trade.
OTOH, the difference in lifetime earnings for people with degrees? Still pretty significant, and the majority of people
with loans are graduating with manageable debt. If you put on your engineering hat and look at the BLS stats, it's probably a good idea, from a strictly financial perspective.
If you're one of the six-figures-of-debt folks, my heart goes out to you, but let's be honest then - we done fucked up. At least you're in a field where you have a chance in hell to pay the loans off, though!
The value that they provide to society as a whole is even less compelling since we could cut out 83% of the process (the part that has nothing to do with the jobs their students will really be doing) and accomplish the same thing by just putting people up in internet-connected government housing and grading what they come up with after two to four years
See above. If that would have worked for you, you're the good kind of freak. But then why aren't you already running your own startup?
Also, fuck-a-duck no. I'm not some pie-in-the-sky hippie who thinks everybody needs to learn three foreign languages and spend four semester reading poetry, but I'm a firm believer in the utility of a broad liberal arts education as a supplement to a technical degree. Starting with writing and communication skills (those equipment requisition proposals aren't going to write themselves), and including, yes, social studies and history. Want to sling code for a living? You are going to work with - and under - people from Asia, Africa, and the ME. Get used to it now, maybe learn what Ramadan and Diwali are, and develop a taste - or at least a tolerance - for spicy food. You don't get that by locking yourself in a room with an internet connection for 2-4 years.
The overall value to society that higher education has is easily observed by comparing per-capita GDP to educational attainment rates. And that doesn't even touch on art, music, etc. - all that other cultural detritus that Universities incubate.
PS: I'll admit that I'm clearly butthurt about my own experiences, but I'm also hoping I've missed something and the world I live in isn't really this mad. I'm pretty sure it is though.
Oh, the world is mad. No doubt.
But you seem to have a very dim view of higher education, and while your own experience may have sucked broiled monkey balls, please rest assured that it's working very well for a lot of people. Just one big spectrum of varying levels of suck and not-suck. Only Sith deal in absolutes.
And, given your level of education, your field, etc., it's not like you're stuck or don't have any options, even if you got off to a rocky start. Cheer up - you can make this work. (And in between the yo momma jokes and bulk beef, ATOT will probably be able to offer you some useful advice.)