There's really no reason to go to university if all you want is to write some Python scripts. University is not vocational training.
University started out as a trade school for the clergy, then added law and medicine, and then became a finishing school. At all points the median student was more interested in drinking than studying. Scholarship has always been a minority pursuit at universities and research universities haven’t even existed for 300 years. Universities are now and always have been vocational institutions. The supply of idle rich who don’t need a job has never been all that high.
See Cambridge as a counter example of everything you said: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Cambridge
> The university arose around mutual aid societies (known as universitates scholarium) of foreign students called "nations" (as they were grouped by nationality) for protection against city laws which imposed collective punishment on foreigners for the crimes and debts of their countrymen. These students then hired scholars from the city's pre-existing lay and ecclesiastical schools to teach them subjects such as liberal arts, notarial law, theology, and ars dictaminis (scrivenery).[17]
The idea that this is “not what it was meant for” which is oft repeated on HN - and I presume in academic circles too - is not only inaccurate as you point out, but also arguably irrelevant, because the people paying the bills and justifying its existence expect otherwise.
It's an idea from the middle of the 20th century. For much of the 20th century, university was just something you did if you were upper class. Then someone noticed that upper-class people had good jobs and decided that must be due to their university attendance. It wasn't.
Ditto the lawyers, who certainly don't need to go to university to read law or argue. Being a lawyer is also basically being in a special club.
Medicine, I can only see a vocational aspect. But that is only 1 in 3.
> At all points the median student was more interested in drinking than studying.
A good use to time in the club. But only relatively rich students can afford to do this. Anyone who drinks their way through a university experience is either rich or busy trying to join a club.
I'll believe that when employers stop giving preference to people with university credentials.
Until they do that, the primary reason most people go to university for CS will continue to be 'for vocational training.' People follow incentives.
Just because there is a need for vocational experts doesn't mean the universities should try to fill it. The place in society for universities is not a short-term-practical one.
Now that I’ve put enough years I don’t get the treatment any more, just strenuously opposed with script-kiddie hacks when I put some intellectual effort in what I’m doing.
There’s a ton of people out there saddling down the industry who are totally our of their depth and terrified of becoming irrelevant.
Arts funding is being drastically cut: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/plans-to-cut-higher-edu... partly because arts graduates make less and partly because studying liberal arts makes students liberal, which the government perceives as a threat.