I went to University of Texas, and managed to do really well on all the tests and projects without learning how to code. But that wasn't because anything was easy. There were a lot of very tough math, and logic classes that some of my class mates who had been working on open source projects since they were 16 did terribly at. It's not easier skills, it's just different skills.
99% of software development challenges are how do you write/maintain large projects without getting totally crushed by the complexity. This is a skill that no one tries to teach, and is also very hard to teach. Similar to being a good writer, it is very subjective, and CS professors are very uncomfortable grading subjectively. It's also harder to create homework for students than just building out toy projects.