One part of this doesn't make sense to me. Can only talk about German universities, and I started in 2003, but...
They will start with math you already know, but only in the first semester, so from October until Christmas, from then on everything is mostly new. But... to be eligible to study you kind of have to have had math on that level at school. with no exceptions.
But for anything programming related? In the late 90s/early 00s there was ZERO mandatory programming in school, and if you were really, really lucky if there was any graded course. We had some elective courses but they were not really awesome and only there because one teacher wanted to do them.
So, I'm also against rehashing stuff you should know, but if you can't know it from school, why wouldn't they start at the beginning?
That's precisely the case with British schools/universities too. I know now that programming has been added to the curriculum, so in years time these intro courses might no longer be necessary, but the opportunity for prior CS/programming education depended heavily on which school you went to and that's a massive red flag for trying to enable people from all backgrounds to be able to study.
They will start with math you already know, but only in the first semester, so from October until Christmas, from then on everything is mostly new. But... to be eligible to study you kind of have to have had math on that level at school. with no exceptions.
But for anything programming related? In the late 90s/early 00s there was ZERO mandatory programming in school, and if you were really, really lucky if there was any graded course. We had some elective courses but they were not really awesome and only there because one teacher wanted to do them.
So, I'm also against rehashing stuff you should know, but if you can't know it from school, why wouldn't they start at the beginning?