[johnsimer]

I know a few current students who are about to graduate from a top 25 CS school, who struggle writing simple standalone methods (of analogous complexity to FizzBuzz). I personally just think these students "just don't get it"(https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/29/the-perils-of-java...). The ones I am talking about in particular are barely squeaking by, but still passing and graduating (without job offers) along classmates who are receiving $150k+ offers from FAANG

If you get enough easy teachers that give partial credit, or that have enough memorization based questions on their tests, and do well in the courses that don't really require deep understanding, it appears that you CAN squeak through and get a degree without really understanding programming.

Albeit, I know plenty of people who "just didn't get it" who did fail out of the CS program at this university, but some of these people do squeeze through.

And then because the 10-20% of graduates from top 25 CS schools who can't really program send in 90%+ of the job applications, you'll get a lot of interviewers saying "So many people with seemingly-good degrees can't even code".

[learc83]

I can see that explanation. Particularly with respect to those candidate's overrepresentation. I think that looking through their transcripts would generally reveal those people pretty easily though.

Also at some top tier schools it's actually relatively harder to completely flunk out, so that might have something to do with it.