Our first class definitely has practical application, but it is still taught by a PHD and covers more ground at a higher level than the current college or university standard.
If teaching applied material makes you a trade school, someone should tell Harvard: http://cs76.tv/2012/spring/
As for the use of the word "college", well, it's the most accurate descriptor of what we are building. We're not there yet, but we will be soon, and having to print a whole new batch of business cards is just too darn expensive. We could have chosen a more startup-ey name, but we hate startup-ey names. I could have named it after myself as well, maybe something like "Huffman Coding". We checked though, and that was taken.
While we're discussing it though, singularity university isn't a university, and clown college does not cover the theoretical aspect of clowning sufficiently. Also, University of Maryland College University is mildly redundant. And why do you park on the drive way and drive on the park way?
