If a person has a bachelor's degree, they can get a Michigan interim teaching certificate by passing a test. https://www.teachercertificationdegrees.com/certification/mi... Permanent certification then requires 12 hours (1 semester full-time) of courses, or working toward a masters degree would probably give an immediate and permanent bump in pay.
Imagine a random liberal arts graduate: Would it be easier to go into elementary teaching in Michigan or software development?
The teachers I know personally obtained traditional four-plus-year bachelors degrees before applying for jobs. In most cases, they had to do a year or more of subbing before finding a permanent position.
(edit to add: education degrees are very hard to get done in four years, especially with the aiding, student teaching, etc.)
It is harder to measure a cost on society inflicted by poorly educated students than it is to measure the cost of buggy, failing commercial software. Also, students who were academic failures are not necessarily guaranteed to fail in life, since there are ways to succeed in life other than by being good at school subjects, whereas an incorrect software program can never succeed.
The same holds true even inside the same field. It depends whether you are near a cash cow or a cost center. Working on infrastructure, building tooling for other developers is not likely to be rewarded as well as writing code that could cost your company millions if there is a bug.
There are also differences in specialization. An average game dev is probably going to make less than an average mobile dev, who in turn is going to make less than what a random quant makes.
I actually believe a greater percentage of the population, by far, is CAPABLE of this, but very few choose a path that gives them a self idealization that they believe they can or want to be a computer expert of any sort.
This is very much a cultural issue- the messages women receive from their media sources rarely contain reinforcement towards technical excellence.
This is a frustration for technically oriented men, I believe, because we aren't directly the source of this disparity- I think the vast majority of STEMish career men would welcome more women into the fold as true peers, but are somewhat aggravated by messages that we are somehow directly responsible for large cultural forces we have little/no power over.
Its been positive to see more girls get into sports as that message has permeated into the culture. Hopeful an equivalent message about women and STEM will percolate into the larger collective id.
And I definitely would NOT expect someone without training to be an effective teacher. I'm in awe of what my kids' teachers are able to do. Classroom management is a skill that is incredibly difficult to master.