There are schools which just teach you programming and computer skills and do a good job at it. But companies will still prefer candidates with computer science

There are schools which just teach you programming and computer skills and do a good job at it. But companies will still prefer candidates with computer science degrees, or even outright require a CS degree, even for simple programming jobs that really don't need one. The degree is used as no more than an intelligence filter. This relegates anyone who has a practically oriented degree to being regarded as a second class programmer, the perception being that you would have studied CS instead if you had the ability. This completely sucks for practically inclined people who are forced to trudge through a theoretical degree that doesn't interest them, and where 90% of the material they will never use, just to prove that they're smart enough. They then tend to blame academia for being out of touch, ivory tower, etc. But academia is not at fault here, they are teaching what they claim to teach: computer science. There are good pratically minded degrees which prepare you just fine for the average programming job, it's employers who constantly signal that they value CS degrees more.