They used to be; I got my first master in that environment; academic rigor was the goal and purpose and my second one what it became after and is now; something to get a job with. The former was free and very hard the latter was loans, pressure but very easy. This happened in about 15 years in the Netherlands, between around 1990 and 2004; from excellent to shite as far as I am concerned. I was 'teaching' (assistant) and teaching for a bunch of those years and it really became quite shitty. My alma mater math & cs faculty is a joke now compared to the well deserved suffering of the 1990s rigor we had to endure. I wouldn't want to have lived the current fluff party. But sure, it's more practical as most we were taught was not practical and was not supposed to be; it was to teach us how to think.