That was my experience in the 80's - we were taught theory, we had to apply the theory in projects so we spent lots of time programming and getting stuff working - but we were pretty much expected to pick up particular languages, operating systems or libraries by ourselves.

The CS theory (i.e. maths based) side of it really has stuck with me - only other thing being vi controls being hardwired in my brain even though I went on to become more of an emacs fan...