I think one of the reasons bootcamps get away with this kind of thing is that, for at least many people, traditional schooling also fails to teach this material

I think one of the reasons bootcamps get away with this kind of thing is that, for at least many people, traditional schooling also fails to teach this material. So if you're going to just teach people enough to get a job, but not actually to do it, better to do it for "cheap" in 6 months than, say, expensively in a 2 year masters program. I think the problem above is probably somewhat worse for data science than software engineering in general, but it applies broadly to quantitative jobs in the tech industry, in my experience.