Seems like a great way for company bosses to say "nah, we didn't know about this, the rogue programmer there made the decision".
Unless you have some way to also blame the management responsible for deciding such a design should be implemented.
Their name is on it as well, with text describing what they approved.
Company-wide, there was a rigid system in place that captured electronic signatures as change requests were documented, code was modified, and tests were completed.
Anything that was done flowed through at least those three distinct groups (data team lead, maintenance programmer, & QA). We could easily tell how a study's database had been modified in the past (including who had requested the change, who programmed the change, and who tested the change)...there was always an expectation that every i was dotted, t was crossed (or semicolon was in place) before anyone signed off on their work since it would permanently enter the record and couldn't be erased.
Consider an analogous situation: You made a mistake designing a building. Should you be able to shrug it off as "mistakes happen"?
This has actually happened in the real world with buildings, and when it does if you are responsible and work diligently to correct the problem people are understanding.
Do the same here.
I'm yet to see a building collapse around me in my city - I see software fail all the time though - I think we are better at building tall buildings than we are building software.
Not so for software.
Perhaps if you change that software might change.
The liability sits with your employer.
As a full time employee, the liability falls on my employer.
No degree, but rather a programmer publicly signs off on his code, and gets both credit and blame for it.
Anyone who wants can register for a programmer ID (in practice a public key). There is no test, just an administration fee.
When you write code you sign off on it, perhaps with some accompanying text describing what parts you worked on.
No more anonymous code shipped by a company entity, instead do it like how movies are done: Every single person gets credit (including QA and administration), every tool used gets credit.