> It seems the current crop of new computing graduates are being taught nothing more than...
At least where I live (and teach) this is not entirely true. However, students tend to switch off when it comes big-O and some finer points of computing/programming. Telling them stat stuff *is* important turned out to be fruitless. Nowadays I say something along then lines off "If you ignore this you will not get a good job, and you will totally deserve it.". Funny enough this seems to work.
But yeah, I have seen the content of courses that are not even a joke.