In Germany, software engineer is a trade you go to trade school for three years while working in a company in parallel. I don't think that IT education and computer science in universities should have a stronger focus on SE as universities are basically a trade school for being a researcher.
Yes, but it is more of a cultural thing than anything else. Studying computer science to be a software developer* is like studying mechanical engineering to be a machine operator.
* except if you are developing complicated algorithms or do numeric stuff. However, I believe that the majority of developers will never be in such a situation.
A software degree or a CS degree with a more applied focus will teach you way better than the trade schools will. It'd be nice if that weren't the case, but from all I've seen it is.
So you end up in that weird spot where it would work very well for someone with a strong focus on self-learning and a company investing into their side of the training, but at that point you could almost skip the formal part completely and just start directly, assuming you have some self-taught base. Or work part-time will studying on the side, and get the more useful degree that way. Plenty places will hire promising first-year uni students.
