Programmer may have been an elite title at one time, but now it's just like saying gardner, chef, or scientist. You just have to work a little harder to figure out whether or not someone is a moron. There have always been morons and there always will be. I may be one of them!
To quote Sturgeon "90% of everything is CRUD". Majority of people that get CS now is due to money (how else to justify the expense of a diploma?), not the appeal computers have, and it's been like that for a while.
Lowering barrier to entry is +EV move, almost always. It multiplies crud but more importantly multiplies the 10% that are worth the crud.
> Majority of people that get CS now is due to money (how else to justify the expense of a diploma?)
Not sure where you are, but universities in Europe are not like in USA.
In many countries public universities are more renowned than private ones and in some, it is even quite symbolic what you pay per semester.
As someone that codes since 1986 with a CS degree, I am often dismayed what many "programmers" seem to know nowadays.