I wonder if just working in a corporate setting and learning these skills as an intern or junior employee might be far more effective.
If it did not. Employment would not require it. Because as most have stated above. It was not about preparing for the workforce. It was for all these other reasons, or the theory of the subject. Why would we want a MS if all they did is meet people and learn how to cook a meal for themselves because they're no longer under their parents thumb?
I would say not too far into ones career. Education matters very little. As in diminishing returns. The best you'll get after attending 'University of X' 5-10 years into your career. Is a high-five because the hiring manager went there too. Not because you're so much better off because you had a class on .Net and Network fundamentals. This is mostly true in all but the very specialized jobs in Tech. For the specialized few that went to top universities.
That's not so clear. Other theories I've heard include "college is a good proxy for being reasonably intelligent and able to complete a difficult task" (mostly from employers themselves) and the more cynical "college education is a class signifier." I personally would say that college is worthwhile, from a purely work perspective, because it provides the student with the tools to encounter a new problem or concept, learn about it, and teach himself how to solve it, but that there's something to the other two explanations I mentioned too. My Japanese degree taught me nothing about programming, but the experience of learning Japanese in a university was useful when I decided I wanted to learn how to program.
Of course there are exceptions (if you're a doctor your higher education materials were obviously directly relevant), but to me this helps explain why so many employers care about a college degree, and not necessarily a degree in a particular subject.
> Not because you're so much better off because you had a class on .Net and Network fundamentals.
A computer science program that has courses devoted to stuff like .NET frankly doesn't sound like a very good one, since the idea of learning comp-sci is to understand underlying principles rather than memorizing how to use a particular tool.
What I mean is the things you mentioned while I do not dismiss them and I believe you. That being learning an unrelated major helped you with learning something else.. Is not actually enough for tech companies to want to hire you. But because we place so much emphasis on the paper. You're over-looked. So what you feel is a higher-education strength is actually a weakness in the market.
Most of the hard-luck stories I've heard related to degrees were people who'd had decent careers and then weren't able to get a promotion because of a company policy saying managers all needed a bachelors, or something to that effect, where the subject wouldn't really be what's at issue. If I'm really being shut out from interviews because my degree is in the wrong thing I have not noticed the effect -- even at tech companies.