Comment by DanielHB

I think it is because CS is such a broad field, every little nook has a ton of different algorithms to study and, like you said, it is not that hard to tell students to implement algorithm X as projects.

While my EE roommates would often just spend their time solving the same types of problems from their text books over and over again. My roommates had a few lab classes where they did get assignments, but they were usually pretty small and couldn't be done at home.