[kdelok]

Oh, I certainly don't mean that a good university place guarantees you a top job. My company targets top universities, so it naturally has to reject a bunch of people who just aren't the right fit. However, it is certainly the case that you can usually infer the other way around (i.e. that people with top jobs tend to have good degrees from well-respected universities).

For many graduate software roles over here, recruiting targets people studying "any numerate discipline". These people don't have any professional software dev experience or a CS background, so wouldn't be able to demonstrate those skills from the start. However, the decent degree from a good university is a proxy for the appropriate skillsets required.

The problem remains that there are people with all the skills who just can't get their foot in the door because their background just didn't give them a reasonable opportunity to do so.