CS courses do keep up with the pace of technology. Most colleges are just 10 years behind. When I was in college 20+ years ago, they were teaching us procedural programming using Pascal. Not even OOP

This is not a big deal when you talk about other engineering disciplines. Construction hasn't changed that much in the past 10 years. Materials engineering doesn't change every couple of year (although is faster than construction engineering). For most engineering disciplines, fresh grads can catch up with the latest technology on the job.

However, IT is a different deal. We keep reinventing new tools and techniques every couple of years. And the pace of reinvention is accelerating. It's hard for colleges to keep up. The industry keeps changing! It's easier for the top colleges, because they can attract people from the industry to teach. It's also easier for colleges that have significant investment in research, since their research drives a lot of the innovation in the industry. It's much harder for the average college. It's almost impossible for community colleges.

The good thing about IT is the more things change, the more the remain the same. All the latest ideas are variations on old ideas. Once you learn the basics, you can easily pick up on the concepts.

So, IT colleges tries to focus on the fundamentals.. Not the tools. You have to learn the tools on your own. A lot of times this can frustate students, because they are all about jumping into a language. However, what's important is not the language but the principles that it is built upon.