I grew up in Massachusetts, and when I was in high school, Northeastern was a school almost anyone could get into and it was known as a college for people who could not afford college. The co-op model was not strictly for job experience but to help defray the costs.
Although the school has become more exclusive in terms of admittance and the appeal of the co-op model is career experience and connections, I think many people factor in making a co-op salary into their financial planning for college.
My son stayed in Boston and lived in a rented house with 5 other students, some in classes and some in co-ops. He was able to save quite a bit of money from his co-op salary and it did not affect his financial aid. He is back in full-time classes this semester and the tuition cost is the same as it was freshman year.
Our son told us about the changes. Most of the classes he took freshman year are gone. the rationale was that automation and AI were already taking over the kinds of jobs you would need those skills for. I don’t know enough about Comp Sci and the job market changes, but I appreciate that they are trying to adapt.
Here is the revised curriculum for lower div classes. Like the article above mentions opts in for more python and java.
In some sense the changes are not different from other schools like MIT and UC Berkeley. For example the MIT introductory course can be either using a teaching language (6.1) or python (6.1A). In the case of Berkeley, CS61A mixes both teaching language Scheme/LISP and python in the same course.
From the linked course descriptions, 6.1000 is a one semester course for those with prior programming experience, and 6.100A and 6.100B is a two semester sequence for those without prior programming experience. Both variants mention use of Python.
Seems like that is why the students are complaining as they found a course like 6.001 more useful. Ability to think with abstraction is probably a more useful skill when AI-driven tools can generate the code in traditional programming languages.