> My opinion is that most people only go to college these days because they perceive it as the only path to a good paying job, not because they are terribly interested in the material.
I know most people here refer to American system and universities but my experience in Poland is, degrees, especially related to computer science, mostly teach you useless, outdated stuff, that you will never need to know. Most people here approach CS degree as something that you simply have to do to get a decent job in IT(though it's slowly changing toward not doing a degree at all), or simply because your family expects you to. Most universities here pump out diplomas to get paid by government and industry, so they can pump out more diplomas. Honestly I haven't met a single employer or even coworker that ever cared if I had CS degree. Most of stuff I learned there is 'nice to know it exists' but nothing I've ever used in real life work, most professors clearly have never even worked in the industry. Best thing that came out of my BEng in CS are friends and realization that noone cares about me so I needed to solve issues and learn on my own.
I know most people here refer to American system and universities but my experience in Poland is, degrees, especially related to computer science, mostly teach you useless, outdated stuff, that you will never need to know. Most people here approach CS degree as something that you simply have to do to get a decent job in IT(though it's slowly changing toward not doing a degree at all), or simply because your family expects you to. Most universities here pump out diplomas to get paid by government and industry, so they can pump out more diplomas. Honestly I haven't met a single employer or even coworker that ever cared if I had CS degree. Most of stuff I learned there is 'nice to know it exists' but nothing I've ever used in real life work, most professors clearly have never even worked in the industry. Best thing that came out of my BEng in CS are friends and realization that noone cares about me so I needed to solve issues and learn on my own.