[bobby_9x]

There is no shortcut to learning. You can spend less time studying, but you definitely won't learn the same material or have the same knowledge.

We now live in a society with lots of distractions. We should be encouraging structured learning environments.

[camelNotation]

You're either painting a straw man of my position and pretending that I advocate unstructured learning or else you're creating a false dichotomy in which we choose between some sort of ad-hoc chaos and the traditional college structure. Maybe both.

Either way, college is structured for a specific purpose and skill-based careers are not that purpose. It might be best to have a structured education, but it's nothing short of ridiculous to think traditional college structure, with it's long semesters and mid-year breaks, is the most efficient way to teach someone how to work in IT, engineering, or any other industrial field.

[Kinnard]

But is college the best structure? There are probably a dozen alternative ways to structure CS learning. I think the really problem is monoculture, the monoculture that is the contemporary cult of college.