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Hm, maybe .... But I wonder how well that would work: It seems like it might be like our course in "discrete math", which is supposed to teach math topics relevant to CS but not addressed in entry-level math courses, but often feels a bit like an buttortment of unrelated topics whose relevance the students don't get -- or don't get until a year or so later, when they encounter the course that uses one of the topics. Sort of a :-) there -- they're apt not to believe us when we say "you will need this later".

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Strongly agreed -- but as someone whose undergraduate major was math, I'm biased. And don't get me started on how little math background some of them seem to come in with .... not all, but enough to make me wonder about what's going on in high-school math courses. But again, I'm probably biased -- it's hard for me to believe that anyone contemplating a career in a technical field can get to college without having mastered basic algebra, but maybe they learned it early in high school and didn't retain it.

Anyway, yeah, our majors are required to take one semester of calculus, the "discrete math" course mentioned above, and two additional math courses selected from a short list of approved courses (second-semester calculus, symbolic logic, etc.). I think this is fairly typical of academic CS programs, or if anything a bit light.

Oh, and "bonehead English" -- well, our majors aren't exempt from university-wide "common curriculum" requirements in the humanities and social sciences, much though some of them seem to wish they were. This also (both the requirement and the atbreastude) is also probably pretty typical for US universities.

-- B. L. Mbuttingill ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.