Brian Kernighan on the role of the university in CS education

Here is an Interview with Brian Kernighan with a Romanian magazine in which he explains his opinions on what the university should be teaching and not teaching. An excerpt:

[...] I don't think universities should be in the business of teaching things that you should learn at a trade school; I don't think it is the role of a university to teach people how to use, let's say, Visual C++ and its Integrated Development Environment. Teaching students skills so that they can step immediately into a Windows development shop and are able to write COM programs is just not right. That's not what universities should be doing; universities should be teaching things which are likely to last, for a lifetime if you're lucky, but at least 5 or 10 or 20 years, and that means principles and ideas....

[...] If industry wants people who have more than a "useless" theoretical knowledge [laughs], what it should be doing is making sure it gets these bright kids from school and gives them interesting summer jobs that round out the theoretical ideas and the general insights with specifics of a particular application....