Because there are very few software engineering degree programs. And between the computer science degrees and visual basic factories there's a wide gulf of nothingness where people who want to be good software engineers should be getting their training.
In other words, I'm very happy with my CS degree, but I learned almost all of my software engineering skills outside of the classroom.
I learned almost all of my software engineering skills outside of the classroom
Me too.
I have to believe that this is the norm, not the exception. No matter how much you learn in school, you're never completely ready. You'll probably pick up much, if not most, of what you really need to know on the job.
Now asks yourselves this - how many of the skills you picked up during your work experience could have been as effectively learned in a classroom setting?
I worked for 16 months in between 3rd and 4th years where part of my job was doing requirements gathering. When I went back to school I had a course that included a section on requirements gathering and I know for a fact it would have made very little sense had I not done it for real beforehand.
Things usually make more sense when you implement your learning. Abstract knowledge is often easily forgotten or poorly grasped, learnt knowledge less so.
The myth that a very narrow set of skills is all that's necessary is not a new one.
I don't really know where it comes from, and my pet hypotheses are too ugly to share, except that their nicest parts have to do with people believing what they want to hear, not what is true.
When I started school, they told us that 4 years of busting your ass in engineering will do nothing but prepare you to start learning when you get a job. Back in 1st year, I thought they were just trying to scare us noobs, but only after a few years did I realize how right they were. There is such a dizzlingly wide array of things to learn, you can't do much except learn the basics.
As if learning the basics of your field isn't time consuming enough, companies now want universities to do their job on top of this as well. Sorry, but that's a bit like demanding that someone teach wisdom - it just ain't gonna happen.
This is just companies whining and looking for ways to offload costs. The missing skills they're complaining about can be developed very quickly (6 months to a year) by any competent grad that's put in a challenging-enough position. The problem is, such positions are a bit hard to find - when the days of paternalistic companies went away, so did the idea of hiring, training and investing in new grads, and too many of the internships and coops that are out there now are just cheap crap work.
The mystery is why they now need to be told this, rather than showing up with them already.