[dmansen]

The answer to mediocre engineers is less education? Doesn't follow.

[pmarreck]

Education is force-fed, extrinsic motivation.

Self-education is self-fed, intrinsic motivation.

There is an arguably significant difference in the quality of the outcomes.

[UK-AL]

Only crap education.

Good education gives you cool things explore, and experienced people to discuss them with.

If I was completely self-taught I would not have as strong algorithm skills, operating system implementation knowledge or compilers skills.

[pmarreck]

Part of self-teaching may include taking formal online coursework voluntarily. For example I'm currently halfway through https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning