[fleitz]

As one of those kids to never went to school, I'm going to agree with you. Most people can't program, however, better schools are only slightly better in outputting people who can.

I find fizzbuzz and other coding challenges much more effective in hiring.

It's hard to do but showing actual code from your codebase with an actual real bug is a much better indicator of whether someone will be successful than anything else.

[PeterisP]

Although educating people can be done in any decent school (or no school at all) better schools do a better job of filtering people, i.e. the key tasks of ensuring that (a) that the less capable people don't get a degree from you, either because they're pushed to drop out or you filter them out during the application process, and (b) that the top cohort of capable people actually apply to your school (in many schools, their degree is an uncertain but strong indicator that you weren't good enough to get into a better school).