It’s a fair criticism for sure. I do not have a black and white view of education as much as I do the roles scientists play in building software. I’ve never hired a non Ph.D. to work on CS problems like new indexing strategies for big data, building a geographic information system, building models, etc. In fact, there is a huge backlash among scientists working in business against the idea that a non Ph.D. is qualified at all to work on actual scientific problems related to software. For this reason, when I build my organization, I separate software developers from scientists. I find that developers are very good at operationalizing and distributing the work scientists do, which ultimately allows the business to benefit from the research. With this in mind, you can see why I don’t think there is a role for people who are not absolute experts in particular academic disciplines when organizations find themselves confronting these categories of problems. So the value proposition Universities are making is really a lie IMO. However, you make some great points. Supporting the apprenticeship movement might be a great way to influence the industry to make some positive changes.