That's the koolaid, but seriously I don't really believe it anymore.

I only had to do this leg work during university to prove that I can be allowed to try and write code for a living. The grounding as you call it is not required for that at all,since im a dozen levels of abstraction removed from it. It might be useful if I was a researcher or would work on optimizing complex cutting edge stuff, but 99% of what I do is CRUD apps and REST Apis. That stuff can safely be done by anyone, no need for a degree. Tbf I'm from Germany so in other places they might allow you to do this job without a degree

But nobody go to college specifically training to do CRUD apps. The point is to give you broad training so that you can do CRUD apps and other stuff too. It is a very bad idea to give extremely specific training at scale, because then you get a workforce that has difficulty adapting to changes. It's like trying to manage a planned economy: there is no point in trying to predict exactly what jobs you will get, so let's make sure you can handle whatever's thrown at you.