Person A spends four years getting a BS in CS at a top-tier school, learning about programming at least for a few hours a day on average, with the benefit of a well-considered curriculum and instruction by wizards.
Person B spends four years working full-time on something interesting at Google, which probably gives her more total hands-on-keyboard time, and also access to some minor wizards, although they may not care so much about teaching her.
Let's say that both of them also spend a bit of time on the side learning programming things not school- or work-related.
If both of them have an equal thirst for knowledge, I just don't see why person A is likely to become a better programmer, or why B would fail to pick up the style of thinking you described (which is common, in my experience, among good programmers.) I honestly think that you're mixing up the consequences of {smart, curious, motivated, spends a lot of time programming} and {took a CS degree}.