CS teaches a lot of theory, but not as much practical. Let's face it, 90% of programming is CRUD and the hardest part of such applications (managing all the sta

CS teaches a lot of theory, but not as much practical. Let's face it, 90% of programming is CRUD and the hardest part of such applications (managing all the state) isn't something that can really be taught in 2 years worth of CS classes (the other 2 years being used on non-CS-specific stuff). Employers don't want to pay to teach new programmers (even CS grads who couldn't get an internship), but generally expect a couple years worth of experience before they'll even consider someone for an "entry-level" dev position. Programming is a job that requires constant learning. If a programmer has what it takes to do that, then it's not too surprising that the programmer can learn the basics on their own. A lot of devs like myself started learning to program around 10 or so. When college enters the picture, these devs are bored for most of the classes (except perhaps things like algorithms or compiler classes). If a would-be programmer had the foresight to look into the programming, then they'd probably note that there's more profit in skipping the degree and putting that 50K on the mortgage instead. CS has more free teaching material online than any other white collar job I know of. A programmer can get the exact same education quite easily if desired (you can't really say the same about other STEM fields except perhaps math).