Because universities see themselves as research institutions - that's where they get their prestige and status from, not from teaching. Teaching people to code

Because universities see themselves as research institutions - that's where they get their prestige and status from, not from teaching. Teaching people to code doesn't do anything for them (except pay some of the bills). The whole bachelors -> masters -> PhD process is just winnowing out the unworthy and stupid. The ones who survive this and go on to publish papers are the entire point. The entire IT industry is a byproduct of CS research, not the point of it. The point of it is to explore the intellectual realms enabled by the mathematics of CS. Reducing this to "university CS departments exist to train programmers" is ridiculous. Slightly tongue in cheek, but not too much.