"They are better prepared to think and solve problems in a changing world than students in a standard university," he said. "They are building things from the first day they get here. Nobody else does that."

Recent graduate Scott Baldwin is now working for IBM as a Web consultant in Austin, Texas, after completing Neumont's program this spring. Baldwin was working at Amazon.com, but his skills weren't enough to keep pace with the volatile technology market.

"Neumont has totally raised the game that I could play in and my marketability is much higher now than it was before," Baldwin said.

But going to the year-round program means giving up certain aspects of college life like football games and school mascots. Neumont does require general education courses to receive a bachelor's of computer science, although many of the courses focus more on practical application rather than on theory.

That lack of traditional classroom theory has drawn criticism from some academics, Doxey said. And while Doxey said it would be nice to get the approval of university leaders, his primary customer is the employer.

Josh Steimle, CEO of Web developing firm MWI, hired two of this year's Neumont graduates to work as programmers. The two men are functioning like experienced programmers and don't require the usual hand-holding of entry-level workers, he said.

"They get the work done, they get it right the first time. Neumont would be the first place I would go to (for hiring) — no doubt about it," he said. "I left school with a lot of theory, but I wasn't able to do any programming. That's a big difference."

On the Net:

www.neumont.edu

www.forbes.com/

www.mwi.com

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E-mail: estewart@desnews.com