[tikhonj]

I highly suspect your observations are a result of cognitive bias. You are much more likely to remember the degree of a programmer if it's something incongruous, so it's the philosophy degrees that stand out in a sea of CS degrees.

Also, a programmer's having a CS degree is much less likely to come up. You note his degree--which is similar to so many others--and don't think of it again, unless, perhaps his performance is poor. Poor performance doesn't match what you expect--or, more likely, what you think others expect--of a CS major, so you remember that it was a CS major that wasn't particularly good.