My .02 is that any topic sufficiently important shouldn't be left to colleges. You can force feed a complex topic to a bunch of undergrads, but they will forget 95% of it, and 5 years later they'll say "ohhh, I think I have a textbook on that in my parents' basement."
The reality is that most of this profession is learned on the job, and college acts as a filter at the start of the funnel. If someone is not capable of picking up the Paxos paper, then having had someone tell them about it 5 years ago when they had a hangover won't help.
The reality is that most of this profession is learned on the job, and college acts as a filter at the start of the funnel. If someone is not capable of picking up the Paxos paper, then having had someone tell them about it 5 years ago when they had a hangover won't help.