I’m a person who dropped out and I’ll be the first to say I don’t think a diploma means much. But I taught myself programming when I was 13, did programming competitions, math contests, and have spent thousands of hours programming, working on algorithms, reading math books, etc. And I know where I’m out of my depth.
That being said, that’s NOTHING in experience. They could learn from there, but they’d be a very very hands on intern.