There's no need to water down university education. We already have community colleges which offer Associate's Degrees and university extensions which offer certificate programs. For example in Silicon Valley, De Anza college offers an AS degree in Programming and UCSC Extension offers a certificate program in Software Engineering. Those can be good options for someone who just wants to learn practical code construction skills without getting deep into CS theory.

https://www.deanza.edu/counseling/degreecert.html

https://www.ucsc-extension.edu/programs/software-engineering...