[coffeemug]

A huge problem with this comparison is that the field of software engineering is really, really, really hot right now. So you can get away with studying up for 16 weeks, and get a $70k job. We've been here before -- http://www.defmacro.org/2013/12/09/learn-to-code.html. When the field encounters a short-term cool-off (as it inevitably will), these hires will be the first to go because 16 weeks is absolutely not enough to get a strong base of fundamentals. You could (barely) learn Rails and JavaScript in that time, but you really aren't getting a strong enough engineering skillset to build a resilient career.

The bigger problem is that high school seniors don't understand basic economics of supply and demand. The job market is becoming polarized -- top people in their fields are doing better than ever, and the market doesn't really need anything else (with software engineering currently being an anomaly). So I'd say it isn't worth going to college (from an ROI perspective) if you aren't positioned to be in the top 10% of your field. This used to not be the case, but the world is very rapidly going in this direction and I'm not sure if there is a solution to this problem, any more than there was a solution to manual labor jobs disappearing post industrial revolution.

> EDIT: When you always add and never subtract, you get cost structures that are not sustainable.

That's brilliant.

[ssharp]

I started college at the start of the dot com bubble. I remember network engineering was the hot field of the time and there were places offering fast turnaround and relatively cheap Cisco certification training.

These days, I wonder how many companies are hiring CCNA's with no other higher education.

Exploiting a short-term market condition is revolutionary, even if it looks different than the status-quo while the market condition exists.