I can see that happening if someone is coming out of a traditional college CS program, which will likely emphasize theory over practical knowledge. That’s not the situation here, though. In lieu of a degree, csuniv needs to work on gaining enough practical knowledge to show potential employers that s/he can come in and start contributing right away.
Most meat & potatoes programming jobs these days don’t involve writing complicated algorithms. If there’s a need for something complicated, it’s more likely someone will go out and find a software package or library that implements the algorithm well. Software jobs these days are mostly about understanding various software packages, libraries and tools, and then combining bits and pieces from them in order to create a working application.
This is the norm in the software industry.