I've found a grounding in mathematics useful for programming, but beyond some knowledge of the physical constraints that the universe places on us and a very healthy appreciation for the scientific method, I'm having a hard time understanding how the hard sciences would help out too much. Electrical engineering seems like it would be more useful, than, say, chemistry or geology.

I talk to a lot of academics, and I think they see the situation differently than is presented here. In a nutshell, the way a lot of them look at it, the amount of computer science in the world increases constantly while the amount of time they have to teach that to undergraduates remains fixed. As a result, they have to pick and choose what they teach very, very carefully, balancing a number of criteria as they do so. What this translates to in the real world isn't that the bar is lowered, but that the bar is different. - Dan C.