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3) Comp Sci programs in US universities, with the 50% rate of employment in the field for recent graduates, have a LOT to answer for.

This one.

My brother is in charge of hiring programmers where he works. He says they don't have any specific degree requirements, but requires that they prove themselves by writing a short program right there in the office. He lays out the specifics for what the program needs to do. It's been 13 years since I took a 1-semester programming class, and I could still write one that met that goal. It's that simple a test.

It took him 3 years and 200 candidates to find someone who could pass that test!

The pay being offered was slightly above the average for that job. People with multiple degrees could not write a program when asked to. What exactly are these universities filling their time with? And why are they passing people who haven't learned squat?!?

I’m surprised he didn’t get sued.

When I started my career, all I got were questions like “What was your most satisfying experience?”
“What was your biggest disappointment?”
“What do you do for fun??”

...even for tech jobs. I offered to take a skills test instead, but the employers typically said they couldn’t give me one.

I had a friend’s son apprentice for me a few years back, he was a Comp Sci student just completed 3rd year. He spent a day a week over the summer break with me, I maybe gave him 8-10 hours of actual instruction, plus a dab of real-world experience in the form of an old client website that needed some sprucing up.

By the time we were done, he told me he learned more in a dozen Fridays of looking over my shoulder than he did in those three years and the ~$60k he’d paid for it.