It is in my country. We routinely attend jobs fairs put on by their CS departments alongside every other software dev firm, we take on interns in their 2nd CS year, etc. etc.

Hell, they're even learning version control (mainly Git, some SVN) in CS degrees now, which was a nice change to see start coming through in the grads we interview.

Although we're seeing universities now start offering Engineering degrees in software with a far more "real-world" requirement including mandatory internships and an industry sponsored research project.

Don't you have apprenticeships in your country?

University programs as I know them prepare the enrolled for a career in science and are typically far removed from concerns of practicability or applicability.

Not hugely, although the current Labour led coalition is trying to make them more widely used. They used to be common place, I'm not really sure what happened.

And even then, we only have them for the trades - plumbers, sparkies, joiners etc.

Due to (apparently) popular demand, my university has been moving in that direction for a while now.