> Today, anyone who studies anything to do with social
> sciences – for example – needs to have some coding skills
> if they want to do effective statistical analysis.
Only if by "coding skills" you mean "Click somewhat appropriate buttons in SPSS". Realistically.
That may be enough to get you through - realistically - but students are usually taught more. Data manipulation is frequently needed and doing that by clicking buttons is seriously no fun. Again: I was talking about what students are taught, not so much what they actually need to pass. I guess technically you don't even have to know how correlation coefficients are calculated (as in: have an intuitive understanding why they are calculated the way they are calculated), clicking a button in SPSS is all you need. But students are taught how correlation coefficiencts work in detail.