I was browsing across Aaraon Skonnard's site doing a bit of XML web services research (Aaron, as always, had got there first - I've seen him talk quite a few times and read his books and he puts out really good information).

Anyway, whilst I'm there I spotted that Aaron is still affiliated with DevelopMentor, which makes sense but I noticed that he's also now associated with Northface University where he lectures by the looks of it.

It's worth following the link - it looks like a very interesting, tightly focused institution. I was interested by the approach to the curriculum which looks to be very much based around practical experience doing software development. So, this page states that around 70% of your time is spent doing project based software development.

I find this interesting because when I went to University (here, starting around 15 years ago) we did some practical computing work but the emphasis was on computing theory. So, we did compilers, languages, databases and so on but we spent more time on computability, coding theory, linear algebra, automata, grammars, algorithms and complexity analysis and so on.

The thing that's always struck me about this is that during my career these things remain constant whilst the technologies around change on a constant basis - I wonder what happens "tomorrow" if you spend 70% of your time learning how to do today's technologies?

Just as an aside, I noticed that the front page of the site also has a quote which says something like

"Northface University is dedicated to preparing you for what the U.S. Department of Labor says will be the fastest growing field through 2010: Software development. A field with an average starting salary of $52,000".

I truly hope that they're right but they're the only people I've spoken to in the last few years who have a bullish view of where the Western software industry (U.S. or otherwise) is heading. Most people just talk "offshore outsourcing" to me all the time.