I think this touches on another issue prevalent in schools (especially in the US) - the lack of vocational training. Students who aren't on the "college path" n

I think this touches on another issue prevalent in schools (especially in the US) - the lack of vocational training. Students who aren't on the "college path" need to hit the world with a chance at income and career prospects to support themselves. The fact that you can achieve a solid middle-class life (compared to a lifetime of minimum wage/unemployment) without incurring > $100k of debt is another clear bonus. Many of their outcomes actually exceed those of their peers who took the college path. We need to admit to ourselves that a tiny portion of us actually do anything that could reasonably be described as "Computer Science" or anything beyond 8th grade math. The vast majority of us read API docs, pull in a bunch of libraries, and often cobble things together thanks to Google/Stack Overflow/ChatGPT/etc. Most of the employment in this industry is something more akin to being a plumber or electrician than it is to the vast majority of what is taught in many (most?) computer science curriculums. We spend the majority of our time building familiarity with tools and learning from experience which tool is the right one for the job. Very, very few of us are nuclear physicists designing or building a reactor. We're electricians that run Romex through walls and wire up switches and outlets. If you think this is a simplistic view or poor comparison watch contractors (project managers) building a house with coordination of all of the disparate systems, integration of various architectures, coordination across teams and disciplines, etc. It looks remarkably similar to all of the startups and projects I have been involved in. Watch an electrician on a datacenter build out - what they end up doing (at various levels) is mind blowing. That's not to say electricians aren't educated and don't understand the fundamentals and a bit of theory - look at the glossary of terms for electrician certification in California as one example[0]. You see things that demonstrate familiarity with concepts such as phase, harmonics, four-wire Delta system, etc. The reality is that people without a college education with less formal training (time and especially cost), work in an apprenticeship (Junior Dev, anyone?), and pass licensing tests work with things that can kill them, other people, burn down buildings, explode, etc. If vocational training is good enough for that it's good enough for what most of us are doing. [0] - https://www.dir.ca.gov/DLSE/ECU/ECGlossaryofTerms_EG.pdf https://www.dir.ca.gov/DLSE/ECU/ECGlossaryofTerms_EG.pdf