There is nothing more important than hands on experience.  I am a fairly recent graduate (2009) and I feel like my clinical experience in the teaching hospital was great, but there were definitely some "real world" gaps that I faced when I began practicing.  I was extremely lucky to have a wonderful boss who was (and still is) willing to support and mentor me through some of the more challenging cases.  The sad thing is that some of areas where I felt the most unsure the first few weeks were very simple topics that I see frequently (i.e. dental cleaning and extractions, lump removals, ear hematoma repairs, etc).  This is because most of the cases we saw at the teaching hospital are more advanced referral cases.  Yes, we had community practice, but that was only 3 weeks.  I was also lucky enough to spend 3 weeks at a spay/neuter clinic, and 2 different rotations in private practices all of which were invaluable to my preparation for going into practice!  The opportunity for students to have more hands on clinical experience seems like a wonderful idea.