People in this thread seem to be massively overrating what it means to get a STEM degree. There are entire schools where the average STEM major has the same or worse problems as those supposed lawyer types that can't do STEM (slightly above average SAT math scores, never learned high school math properly, etc). Lots of people go to schools that aren't selective at all and accept any reasonable high school graduate and these schools still produce plenty of STEM graduates. If someone you know scored 550 on SAT Math, sure, in some circles, this qualifies them as being the mathematically illiterate liberal arts person who would be laughed out of any legit STEM class, but there are entire schools where that's significantly above average. For instance, at the University of West Georgia, the 75th percentile SAT Math score is 510. Keep in mind, this is still considered a selective school in that they have competitive admissions - this isn't true of all schools. Because the system is so stratified - kids tend to go to school with others that aren't too far apart from them academically overall - most people are overly attuned to differences in aptitude between students studying different subjects at the same school, while ignoring much larger differences in aptitude between students that go to different schools.
For instance, at the aforementioned UWG (again, keep in mind this is more like a typical college - there are lower-tier schools that are much worse), their program map for CS assumes that you would start with College Algebra (this is Algebra 2 for kids who somehow managed to graduate high school without mastering it) or Pre-calc.
https://www.westga.edu/student-servi...ogram_maps.php
https://www.westga.edu/student-servi...gebraStart.pdf