It is such a stupid barrier to entry.

I went a couple of years but never finished undergrad. That first job tangentially related to what I wanted to do required a personal connection because no one was going to hire a kid to hack code. But after that first job walking away with some (embellished) experience and me listing the university on the CV without mentioning a degree, I was able to break into the field.

Weirdly, you don't need a uni education to do software engineering because of how democratized the information is on computer science and how freely people share their code and techniques online for you to study. You can Good Will Hunting yourself by your own bootstraps in this area, trivially. But places really wanted to know you had that piece of paper. Even when I knew friends with that piece of paper and were incompetent at the actual craft.

Only a few times have prospective employers asked about the degree and it was a problem (some ten years past lol). It ends up being really good signal on if that place is worth it.