Is it better to pursue knowledge through taking college Computer Science courses, which may be behind the times, or to learn the languages and technologies that are currently the most in demand in industry?

If you spend too much of your near future time in the university, I am afraid you would not be able to nail a job just after. And, if you try to nail a job now, you might be able to find a menial job, perhaps an internship somewhere; but it will be hard for you to advance from there. I would try to dance in the two weddings somehow. Developing for the web is probably your best bet for a future career, since you could get things done quite fast (=without knowing it all), although you will make MANY mistakes along the way, but that's a part of the learning process. Also, web development would allow you to take on some paid projects and learn from them; nobody will hire a green guy to code Java without even a CS degree. Web development, albeit being considered in the past as an easier field (not by me), requires some theoretical knowledge and practical one. Even so, everything I am writing is applicable for another field, if that's where you are going. From your university, you could and need to learn a few fundamental CS subjects. I would see if they have: 1) A decent Java/Objective C (=iOS) course - will first introduce you to a whole new language, which will happen many times in your professional life. You could learn different aspects of application development than in C++ such as: UI design, reusing and researching for existing frameworks, advanced development paradigms and patterns (that are usually not being carried in a C++ class). 2) Data structures' class - for any development language you would need to know what tool to use for the job, be it an array, objects, trees, linked lists, etc. Even though many languages abstract away their implementation details, this course is imperative. You will never pick this topic up from coding small projects and will have a gaping hole in your understanding. 3) If they have a practical Unix course - I would take it, although you can learn it by yourself. Mastering Unix opens many doors and is required or a big plus on many jobs (I develop on a Mac, and HAVE to master its underlying Linux). If your university is not great, I would take this classes from Stanford et al instead. But take them seriously. But university will get you so far; if you want to nail a job, you need to be more than prepared for real-life coding. Remember that learning by practice is a long task. Read a lot and make sure you understand what you are doing - all the time! Start with some projects. Then read some tutorials. Then start a bigger project. Read some official documentation. Code some more. Fix your code with what you've learned. Pick up another task and do the same. As an example of web development, I would start with HTML. Create a small site. Read about layouts. Do some layouts. Read tutorials about structuring your DOM. do that. Start doing some CSS. Read a bit about that. See some examples. Run into Twitter's bootstrap. read their examples. Code using it. make sure I understand everything. Take on JavaScript. code some. Read some MDN pages. then master JS. Then Rails. Or Node. Just an example. This will prepare you for real life problems and solutions. Prospect companies are looking for somebody who knows the basics -- hence some university core classes are required -- and knows how to pick up the rest -- hence some practical experience by yourself. Good luck.

Ohad's answer is a lot more complete than what I'm about to say, but I just want to remind you of one thing: Never let college interfere with your education. If you feel like you're not learning enough, learn on the side. If you're learning things you don't think goes in line with the direction you're going, change directions. There's a fine line between being well rounded and being unfocused. Also, only you know your pace of learning. If you're not living up to it's potential and could be doing more, you're intentionally not keeping on pace with yourself. was another answer I gave in regards to "how to progress", may help you.

A college degree (the major doesn't matter) is like a 'license' to think and work independently.  It allows you to get jobs that people without college degrees will have a very difficult time being considered for. If you want to program, you don't need to get a degree in computer science.  learning to program is something that you can (and many say 'should') do independently.  The benefit of taking courses in programming is that it gives you easy access to a community of students and professionals who are very interested in computers, so you can ask them questions.

In your university courses, you are learning technology. Don't confuse technology with products (often called technology in industry). Products are ephemeral and can always be learned. Real technology (and theory) is the timeless basis for the field. As one of my profssors once said, "Nothing is as practical as good theory."

I say to stick with the university courses. They don't learn you what to do and use, they learn you how to learn new things. At the basis all languages are the same and the algorithms do not change. The way a computer works has never changed from its beginnings. It's just faster and it has much more memory. It good you know c/c++, assembler its a must. It will save you when debugging serious issues. If your friend is skipping the basis, he will problebly never know about memory leaks or why a program runs slowly after a while or crashes with no apparently reason or how a computer works. "Cool" tehnologies: easy come, easy go. When the iphone appeared, they didn't allowed native applications, only html/javascript apps. The pressure from the developers forced apple to open to native apps. Nowadays the html/javascript apps are cool again. The "cool" trends seem to be cyclicle.

It is certainly better to learn real Computer Science v.s. just knowing a language. If you take the time to truly understand computer science concepts, you could pick up practically any new language in a very short time.