I agree, but IMHO most jobs in the industry that don't require you to prove that an algorithm is O(log n) shouldn't need a degree at all.

In the area of the world where I live, if you want to be an electrician, you can do that after you finish high school. You have to take a course and get a certificate for it as a legal requirement (which is true of any profession where you can get people killed) but it's pretty straightforward, and the course only involves pretty basic stuff.

And don't look down on electricians. My degree is in EE and when I need some work done on the installation in my house, I call an electrician. I could do what they do, but sloppily and with far more dangerous results.

The CS equivalent to an electrician would be people who do basic IT support (i.e. tell someone to reboot their Windows machine) and easy programming like creating a blog.

And they can do their job just fine. This isn't 1995, when writing dynamic websites was a pioneer's job. What they do is enough of a commodity that it can be outsourced to college freshmen at the end of the world. People don't need a degree to do that now, just like they didn't need one back then, only for different reasons.

Also, no, doing electrician's work is far more complex than IT support. For one thing, the chances of dying because of doing it improperly are quite disproportionate, and the amount of theoretical knowledge you need in order to be an electrician is not negligible at all. Your average hipster who's proud of the amazingly cool things he's hacking on his Arduino knows a lot less about it than your average electrician, even if the electrician isn't so obnoxious about it.