I've come from a vastly different background, and don't feel qualified to comment on your experiences, but some of your essay rings true for me nonetheless.
I did a Computer Engineering degree nearly 30 years, in Australia, where there was very little financial burden, so it was "easy" for me. During that degree, I had the option to enroll in a lot of CS subjects, but most of the course was about circuit design. Several years later, I did a physics degree, and picked up a few "easy" credit points by doing simple programming subjects. A few years later, I ended up in the USA, where I've worked ever since.
While I did learn a few useful things (like data modeling, SQL, and what recursion was), after graduating and getting into software development, I discovered that almost every useful thing I learned had come to me after university, learned in my own time. Languages? My own time. How to use bash properly? My own time. Hashtables, balanced trees, operating system memory management, how linkers worked, scripting languages, source code control (VSS, CVS, SVN, Mercurial, Git)? All learned in my own time.
Luckily, I often had colleagues who were able to instruct me, or point me at appropriate materials, so I could use my time valuably. I suppose that having a degree got me the job that then got me those colleagues. Also, there are some things that I learned that I doubt I could have learned without my degrees (e.g. Fourier Transforms)... but I don't use those things in my job. Almost everything I learned that makes me a software engineer came from my own time since leaving university.
I realize that I have immense privilege in having these degrees (especially since my son is about to start on his, and I'm horrified at the cost). I find it very odd that several companies in the USA have required me to have my qualifications before they would hire me, when the only things I've used in their employ was learned outside of a university. The same appears to be the case for many people I know, for people with and people without a degree.
So my experience has taught me that a degree confers the benefits of privilege. It also tells me that for any given person who is a software engineer, they could well have a far better education and skillset than I do, despite not having any formal education at all.
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I've come from a vastly different background, and don't feel qualified to comment on your experiences, but some of your essay rings true for me nonetheless.
I did a Computer Engineering degree nearly 30 years, in Australia, where there was very little financial burden, so it was "easy" for me. During that degree, I had the option to enroll in a lot of CS subjects, but most of the course was about circuit design. Several years later, I did a physics degree, and picked up a few "easy" credit points by doing simple programming subjects. A few years later, I ended up in the USA, where I've worked ever since.
While I did learn a few useful things (like data modeling, SQL, and what recursion was), after graduating and getting into software development, I discovered that almost every useful thing I learned had come to me after university, learned in my own time. Languages? My own time. How to use bash properly? My own time. Hashtables, balanced trees, operating system memory management, how linkers worked, scripting languages, source code control (VSS, CVS, SVN, Mercurial, Git)? All learned in my own time.
Luckily, I often had colleagues who were able to instruct me, or point me at appropriate materials, so I could use my time valuably. I suppose that having a degree got me the job that then got me those colleagues. Also, there are some things that I learned that I doubt I could have learned without my degrees (e.g. Fourier Transforms)... but I don't use those things in my job. Almost everything I learned that makes me a software engineer came from my own time since leaving university.
I realize that I have immense privilege in having these degrees (especially since my son is about to start on his, and I'm horrified at the cost). I find it very odd that several companies in the USA have required me to have my qualifications before they would hire me, when the only things I've used in their employ was learned outside of a university. The same appears to be the case for many people I know, for people with and people without a degree.
So my experience has taught me that a degree confers the benefits of privilege. It also tells me that for any given person who is a software engineer, they could well have a far better education and skillset than I do, despite not having any formal education at all.