wdym, obsolete?

It depends on the company.

I have an AP degree in Computer Science (Academic Profession - it's a 2+0.5 year degree in Denmark that serves as a basis for a BSc specialisation, basically allowing you to "top it up" to multiple full BSc's if you want to, e.g. in my case I could've gone on for sysadmin, database engineering, and software engineering BSc's, each taking a year + 4-6 months of internship), and even with a decade+ of experience working for companies of all sizes, I often get rejected because not having a full Bachelors.

And it's often a weird leadership thing. A few years back I interviewed for a company, and hit it off with the tech lead of the team I would've been joining. The whole process was smooth, the team liked me, and vocally preferred me over other candidates. But the CTO - who was the last interview round - opted for a candidate with lesser skills, because he had a BSc from a university the CTO knew (or was somehow involved with, I don't know the specifics). They ended up firing him within half a year, and to date the tech lead tells me how much better things would've been if the C-suite wasn't so blinded by a flashy diploma.

Meanwhile most places don't give a damn. If you have experience, and/or a good CV, and can prove yourself in the technical challenge part of the interview, it doesn't matter if you have a PhD or if you walked in from the street with a high school diploma. What matters is what you can do and deliver.

Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu) asks for high school transcripts, so this is believable

Or it's AI

Actually Indians

Thats the solution in my country... make an impossible job posting, reject everyone, whine to the government, import indian and pay 50% of their wages while the federal government pays the rest. Also, they can't say or do anything to assert their own rights or their TFW closed permit gets torn up and they get deported...

That certainly helps. A job you don’t need is a job that can’t mistreat you.

I think a lot of it is well roundedness and a good foundation for the later practical applications.

School put me off going to uni. I don't need to spend even more hours learning about the fucking benefits and drawbacks of token ring networks.

Government tripling the cost of uni compared to the year before me was also a lot of it. Didn't learn to drive because insurance alone was £2k which I didn't have. Now you want me to spend £9k a year? Haha, nope.

They tried to make it sound better by saying its like the cost of going to Starbucks every day. That put me off Starbucks too.

Lol as a drop out I thought linked list and binary sort were the apex of programming and useful in all context.

No, but knowing how one works help you get a fuller understanding of data structures. And data structures is definitively something one will use and sometimes create (well, if you're a back-end dev, anyway)

ehh, even people that retain literally nothing can get through college to get a paper

There may be the odd bureaucratic company here and there that can not overlook a missing degree because there is no procedure for it. Generally though, previous employment is proof enough.
Personally, I'd avoid the ones who demand to see one anyway because I wouldn't be a good fit.

logically, but employers are rarely logical. Also the age old problem of literally everyone requiring "experience" so you can't even get that employment history.