I learned programming online and got jobs as a developer (I did later study CS at a university …

Those students do exist, but there are an exceedingly small minority. Of course, they won't tell you this, because everyone likes to believe they're self-motivated. Most people just aren't. The simple question to ask is, when you go home, what do you do? If the answer is learn how to sew or work on your project car you've had for 10 months, you can probably learn on your own. If your answer is watch TV, play video games, go on a walk - then you can't, and you should go to university. Some people have told me this question is unfair. I mean, they're so tired from work, of course they want to relax. Well, guess what - your life doesn't stop if you're learning how to code on your own or whatever. If that's all it takes for you to not do it, then you don't have what it takes. How often are people picking up new and complex skills that takes years to get the hang of? Almost never . So there y…

> There are definitely plenty of students who would do just fine, if not even better, without the external discipline and structure. How do you know? It's easy enough to assert, but what kind of proof can there be for this assertion? Obviously the students are enrolled in university, and their accomplishments without it are only hypothetical.

> I'm teaching faculty at a university and, at least where it comes to lecture courses, I don't find this a bubble. There are definitely plenty of students who would do just fine, if not even better, without the external discipline and structure. I don't understand how you can make this claim based on observing students who are in an environment with discipline and structure. I thoroughly believed this to be true when I was younger. I thought the explosion of the internet and availability of free course materials, videos, MOOCs, and any information you want was going to change the education game forever. What finally changed my mind was when I became a hiring manager. I decided I'd give an interview to almost every self-taught developer who applied. If someone didn't have a college degree listed on their resume, I'd schedule a call to hear their story. I thought I was going to be uncover…

In my experience people who have learned to code by themselves write the most incomprehensible balls of spaghetti. Then when everyone else struggles with their garbage code they convince themselves it's because they're so good because they didn't need to go to uni and learned it all on their own. Universities have all sorts of pathologies, from academic fraud to parasitic admins, but they also have people with deep knowledge of their field and who occasionally are even good teachers, and undergrad courses at least leave you enough time to explore and direct your own learning. They also put you in an environment where you can measure yourself against others, which you sure don't get sitting in your bedroom hacking your games. As a consequence, your head doesn't get inflated so much (unless you're top of the class, which kind of naturally resolves itself when you get your first job where e…