As much as I want to agree with you and I do in principle. My reason for not trusting a degree is because I've first-hand seen degrees being given out like candy. I've seen companies hire degreed individuals and then spend a year training them in a bootcamp before they're remotely productive.

I've seen individuals that can't speak English, can't spell, use punctuation and write a coherent sentence given a degree. I don't want to bring race into this, but it's very much an important issue here in South African universities: there is a huge shortage of black developers. So universities have immense pressure to rubber-stamp pass the black individuals lest they be seen as the "problem" or "racist".