[bitmasher9]

Self study can only go so far, and often when someone self studies there are obvious gaps in their education compared to someone that entered a formal program.

Studying in a university has the advantage of learning from experts and being surrounded by people that are also learning from experts. This has significant advantages.

[newsoftheday]

> Self study can only go so far

I retired last year after a career as a software engineer for several decades, 99.99% self-taught. I'm not unique. I've known many others who did the same.

> Studying in a university has the advantage of learning from experts

Whether they are experts is something I highly doubt when thinking about all the graduates I interviewed and worked with over the years. In my experience, the better software engineers came from the self-taught route.

> being surrounded by people that are also learning from experts

Homogenized learning produces likewise results; the quality of the result is highly subjective and debatable.

[xboxnolifes]

Software engineering is a pretty unique field as far as self study goes. There are others since the dawn of the internet, but many domains dont have great online learning resources. And then there's labs and research.

[treis]

I don't think that's really true. Big ones like medicine and law have very well developed programs. To the point where something like half of med school students attend class rarely or never. More esoteric and less explicitly goal oriented fields aren't going to have as developed options but I doubt there's any undergraduate degree that you couldn't fairly easily mimic with self study.

The difference is that software engineering more or less doesn't use a comp sci degree to gatekeep.

[xboxnolifes]

Most undergraduate, and certainly almost all first few years of undergrad, could no doubt be replaced with self-study. I agree with that. I was mostly thinking science/engineering fields that need either an extensive set or expensive set of lab tools and machinery. Or as you bring up medicine, things such as autopsy and hands-on experience. And then there's just having people around (teachers and classmates) that push you toward thoughts you wouldn't even be aware of to think about.

Software engineering's main difference isn't even the lack of credentialism, though that certainly helps. The big thing is the core feedback loop of coding. It's short, has immediate feedback, and practically everything you need to become a good developer is freely available due to FOSS culture.