[thunk]

I frequently hear that, at the very least, a degree shows that you can finish something. If it's true that smart hackers can give themselves a better-than-university education for the price of the books alone, and they discover this fact early in their college careers, wouldn't finishing actually be a negative indication -- a susceptibility to sunk costs? I know the case can be made that college's real education is social, but it seems like you could get that part cheaper by hanging out around other hackers.

[baguasquirrel]

In hindsight, the biggest benefit for me, from going to college was not the CS program. It was that the CS program actually had some really good hackers--still to date the friendliest and smartest lot of hackers I'd met outside a few particularly good Haskell meetups. So it's not mutually exclusive.

The second biggest benefit was that I was introduced to psychology as a science, and not some pseudo-intellectual horsing around as it was made out to be in high school. Ditto for economics. Taken together with the other cultural studies I dropped in on, it was something that's been fairly difficult to replicate now that I'm out of school. I'm actively trying to recreate at least some part of that experience now (using technology of course ;).

The clincher is that my alumni meetups have been nowhere near as enlightening as college was. I sometimes wonder if some people took boring pills during graduation, or if it really was the diversity that brought it out in people.

In all, college is what you make of it, just like real life.

[jquery]

As someone with a CS degree, I agree with you, to an extent. This is more an issue of Baynesian probability. From what I've seen in industry, your run-of-the-mill self-taught hacker is somewhat worse than a high-quality CS graduate--many of them were not making the crafty calculus you describe, they were just too unmotivated to attend college.

You also have to consider that many people do not attend college out of a pure monetary cost-benefit analysis. Besides, even if one did, it's heavily subsidized by Uncle Sam, so until the bubble hits its peak* (like housing), it's still a fairly safe bet.

*I believe humanities and other equally non-vocational degrees have already peaked.