I think it's the same in-group elitist mentality that drives so many people away from the industry. Luckily focused study in college can level these two groups

I think it's the same in-group elitist mentality that drives so many people away from the industry. Luckily focused study in college can level these two groups you describe, and non-"hackers" can get very good. If we slightly re-write parent's argument to remove the elitism and focus on the people it's possible to see the same message without the baggage. Focused study can level the groups, but regardless of how people get there, the quality of any graduating class has a roughly bi-modal distribution. One group is the students who kept up in class, knew what they were doing, and learned a lot. It doesn't matter if they had experience going in, or worked hard to make up for lost time. And the other group half-assed it just well enough to make it over the finish line. Or to rephrase again - you had people who wanted (for whatever reason) a skillset that is marketable, and a group that thought they could buy a ticket to a good jobs.