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I’m not in CS, so maybe it’s different, but I don’t know how we can expect to get skilled biologists, mechanical engineers, psychologists, etc without something that’s very similar to the 4-year degree.

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I'm not sure American universities are still issuing things similar to 1990s 4-year degrees. They issue documents claiming to be degrees, but the quality has dropped, and they aren't what they used to be.

Having taught the new engineers, and having worked with those 1990s mechanical engineers, I strongly disagree. It’s a recurring belief that the new generation is regressing. When typewriters became common, teachers worried about handwriting. When calculators became common, math teachers worried about mental math skills. If anyone alive was old enough to protest, “the greatest generation” probably would have a different name.

Edit: initially i said “ People bemoaned the loss of chalk-on-blackboard skills when paper and pencil got cheap”, but apparently that’s not true, it was first claimed in a piece of satire, and then became mistaken for the truth.

Yeah, people still go to college as high school students who don’t know much and come out as almost-engineers, so degrees definitely still have value. And I don’t see a lot of difference in skill between the generations after accounting for experience.

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