In other words, it would work great in an alternate universe.

First, an admission: I'm getting old....

Over the years, I've had the opportunity to know many, many people who would qualify as "rich". By that I mean having 5 or 10 million in the bank....

Not a single one of them accumulated that money through technology. It was all through mundane crap like payphones, video game machines, soda machines, condom machines in truck stop bathrooms, etc....

Point is that there are a LOT of rich people out there. But only the ones like Gates and Zuckerberg ever make the news. The vast majority of wealthy people got right doing things that no "smart" person would ever even consider, simply because it was just such a dumb idea.

At my advanced age, I've come to the conclusion that the key to getting rich is simply being too dumb to realize that your idea is stupid, and going for it anyway....

Yes, those professions certainly do exist. I apologize for my lack of clarity in my comments.

Given that this is slashdot, and that I'm in IT, and have been for almost 30 years, and over that time have come to expect that most of the people I communicate with on slashdot are in a similar line of work, my comments have been focussed toward that audience.

Obviously, you can't become an doctor or a dentist without jumping through the academic hoops. There is no "self taught" path into certain professions.

But the truth is that IT work is pretty much nothing more than a trade these days. Whether your a sysadmin, a developer, or a networking guy, it's perfectly reasonable to "self-teach" all of that stuff. And in my experience, which is extensive, the self taught people are always, always, better than the people who "took a class". Or "have a degree".

The most skilled, smartest, most talented guy I've ever worked with spent 20 years as the manager of a lumber yard while he did this stuff as a hobby. The things he knows would humble anyone reading this.

Out of the three of you, I think the main point is this:

What do each of you still owe on your student loans?

Given that you landed in pretty much the same career position, at pretty similar ages (based on your own telling....), it seems to me that would be a pretty good guage of the value of a degree....

My suggestion would be that tradesmen not have licensing requirements at all. If I want to hire someone to wire up my kitchen when I remodel it, and I'm satisfied that he knows what he's doing, and I'm satisfied with the price that he's asking.... It's none of the state's goddamn business what sort of agreement we come to.

Yeah, that's pretty much how it works in the US, too....

You post an ad that requires:

1.) 25 years experience administering Windows Server 2012.
2.) 35 years experience administering RedHat Enterprise.
3.) 15 years experience performing open heart surgery.
4.) 20 years experience as an Air Force fighter pilot.

Once that ad fails to attract any "local talent", an Indian agency will send over a resume that magically satisfies all of the requirements, even the impossible ones, and "Bingo!", now you have your H1B indentured servant.

Since most employers don't care about a degree once you have a couple decades of experience, there's no reason to bother lying about it.

Based on your defensive posture, I can only draw two possible conclusions.

1.) You are currently a student enrolled in one of those ridiculously priced "leading universities"
or....
2.) You are a professor who either works for one of them, or earned your degree there.

After nearly 3 decades in this line of work, I have never met a coworker or colleague who considered their time in college to be anything other than a gigantic waste of huge sums of money. And that includes colleagues with Masters and Doctorates from "leading universities".

I know a few. Not many, but a few. I don't see them as exceptionally intelligent, they've just spent a lot of time and hard work getting educated about their field. I'll admit, the stuff they know, they know very well, and a great deal of it baffles me.

But to me "intelligence" is not measured by how well you know what you've had training for, it's measured by how well you can solve problems in areas where you've had no training at all. And based on that criteria, I have to give carpenters and mechanics very high scores.

Yeah, of course you can learn things in college. Once you graduate and spend 10 years in the workforce, especially in a technology related field, everything you spent those ridiculous sums of money to learn will be outdated, obsolete knowledge. You'll have to keep learning on your own to keep up with the evolution of the technology in your field.

And if you can do that, you can probably spend $1000 at Barnes & Noble and learn every bit as much of the *important* stuff as you'll get from a $75,000 trip through a university.

Yeah.... I do know those differences.

You talk like someone who's been immersed in academia for too long.

Had you spent some time in the real world, perhaps you would have learned why, in many cases, real world examples are the most accurate predictor of what your experience will be.

Data and analysis are fine, right up to the point where they collide with reality. At that point, I'll take "anecdotal evidence" from someone who has been there and done it over predictions made by someone who knows a lot of fancy math any day of the week.

And THAT is a piece of wisdom that they won't teach you in college. You only pick that one up after a few decades of actually dealing with reality and noticing how little the world cares about what the data, analysis, and models say should happen.

Yes, you can go to college and become successful. What I'm saying is that it's not the college education that made you successful, as much as certain groups would like everyone to believe that. Success comes from skill. Either skill at a particular vocation, or skill at playing corporate politics. Neither of those skills can be mastered in a university setting, mastery comes from actually doing it in the real world.

Heh... I spent 3 1/2 years at a 2 year business school studying programming. Yeah, I partied a bit more than I probably should have. Never did bother to finish up those last 3 classes and get my degree, since I found a good job, which was the goal I had in mind in the first place.

Since then I've had a mostly successful career in IT. I say "mostly" because things got pretty rough these past few years during the recession, but I'm back on track now and making more than I ever have. During my career, I haven't used *one single thing* that I learned in college. Everything I've done that I actually got paid for has been self-taught. In fact, in my current role as a Linux sysadmin for a very large ISP, I spend all day working with things that didn't even exist until I had been out of college for a good 7 years. Even the coding I do, and I do plenty, doesn't benefit much from my programming classes. Aside from bash scripts, everything I write is OO, and that was only just starting to be talked about when I was in school. C++ didn't start getting taken seriously until several years after I was done.

Never, not even once, in over 25 years, has my lack of a college degree even been mentioned in a job interview.

College is valuable (potentially) in only 3 ways:
    1.) To get your foot in the door for that first job. IMHO, getting that first job without a degree may be a lot of work, but far less work (and far cheaper) than a degree.
    2.) To prove to people of a certain mindset that you "can play the game". It's proof that you can jump through hoops, even when they're ridiculous.
    3.) The social aspect. This is the most valuable part. You have 4 years to start building your "network".

It has nothing to do with showing that you can do a job, because college does NOT prepare you to do "real world" work. For the most part, it doesn't even teach you useful skills. Maybe a few "general concepts" that you can apply, but that's about it.

Some of the smartest people I know are tradesman. I don't know a lot of plumbers, but I know electricians, carpenters, and mechanics who are absolute geniuses.

And some of the biggest morons I know have PHDs. They may know a whole lot about their field of study, but that's ALL they know. College professors, in particular, seem to be very unaware of reality and completely lacking in common sense.