you want hands on, try Deep Springs: http://www.deepsprings.edu/

Curious how these school end up doing. When I was deciding what to do for college I really liked a place in Florida called New College. Horrible area (lots of old people) and apparently the place is weird (never visited), BUT the idea they have of creating contracts per semester and graduation based on completion of the required number of contracts is pretty cool version of this. It sounded like a whole college exp of basically self-researching/learning.

Didn't think it'd be good for CS so I didn't, but I imagine that's what the most successful of these schools will do to keep people creative and avoid the whole "one person does all the work"-group-projects.

“Companies often sponsor the projects and provide instructors”

welcome to costco, i love you...

I kind of don't understand how this is not the standard. It it 1786?

I cringe when I see articles such as this, leading research universities will always be superior to "teaching" schools. Not only is conducting quantitative research far more difficult than teaching, the research garners prestige and leads to higher rankings which attracts a more intelligent and ambitious student body. Ultimately the real value of a degree comes from the networking and signaling ability granted by it, I can always learn on my own by working through textbooks or reading journal articles. What I'd really like out of a university experience is to befriend people who will be starting innovative companies or researchers publishing in top journals.