This is a really brave thing you're doing, I'm glad it seems to be working out for you.
A nitpick on spelling/word usage (sorry): I think instead of "in times of desparity" you want "in times of desperation". "In times of disparity" would be applied to something like a country.
No worries. I'm excited for you to continue blogging about your progress, and you'll get better at writing along the way. Just don't want people missing the importance of what you've accomplished because of a few typos.
As long as you stay busy, that's the key. I left high school after one year to do my own thing and since then have had some pretty extraordinary experiences. I recently left the institution where I had a full scholarship and will instead be getting my second degree (first bachelor's) within a year somewhere else– because the other things paused. I wish you the best of luck, but make sure that you don't let anything that happens close your mind. To stay on top of your game you have to be able to see when the game changes. If work ever dries up and you find yourself idling, don't be afraid to go back and do some of the things you didn't need before.
This message has been brought to you by Clonazepam and too much late-night circuit analysis... (I'll save the regret for not waiting to write later until the morning)
I definitely think that's a key point in all of this. And really I'm just 18. That's the really, really cool part. If I totally :facepalm: fail in two years, I can say, "Ok, college might not be a bad idea."
Exactly. I just turned 20, could've gotten my bachelor's two years ago, and yet I still don't have one. And so what? I've spent every day loving the experience of whatever it is I'm doing, I don't even regret exploring all the dead ends. It's all part of life, even when your path twists more than others'.
Edit: I should credit my fiancée who is halfway through the last program that I left– she has much more patience for all of things that I would only see as a poor use of time (i.e. taking introductory classes in which I already have 20+ credits at junior or senior level). Otherwise perhaps I'd be a bitter sap, which is probably how I come off anyway after a couple days of no sleep. Dead ends for me are not for her and vice versa, so it's all rather interesting.
Unfortunately, you won't have the time to go back in 2-3 years. You'll be too busy trying to pay your bills, keep the apartment, deal with your psycho girlfriend, have some semblance of a social life, and deal with that stupid used car that needs to pass inspection. Oh, and dont forget about that crap client who won't leave you alone. Good luck dude.
Also, a little note to anyone who has decided to either skip or take a break from school at any point in their career:
There's no shame in saying that you weren't ready for it then. It doesn't mean you couldn't handle the material, or the environment, or anything... it just means that you had some potential which, at that time, was not going to be fulfilled by doing whatever. 5, 10, 20 years later, not only will your potential have grown but so too the chance of doing so much more with it. I'm still younger than all of my classmates but I feel like I have the same approach as an old man– I came to learn, with the added benefit that all the work I do goes deeper with my additional experiences. So err, "Keep on rockin' in the free world..." but don't be afraid to take home the royalties after you're famous.
Hey man, great job. Wonderful blog post, the only thing that bothered me about it was this part "I chose not to have much of a social life. That's because I want to go somewhere." As if to say that people with a social life aren't successful. Aside from that, great blog post, and good luck on the journey.
Can you explain the open government intern a bit more in detail? How was it that you were able to acquire it...I too would like to do something similar and I have felt an inclination to abandon post-secondary education.
Not the OP, but the Code for America program is really amazing if you want to get in to open government work. I know several people who've gone through it and they've all ended up in great spots doing work they care about. The founder, Jen Pahlka, recently gave a TED talk on the work she's been doing:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jennifer_pahlka_coding_a_better_gov...
Haha, I'm an introvert. I think if I had any more friends than I have now, it would take away from what I do. And hey, if you like having friends, you can figure a way to fit it in, but I like keeping things lean and simple.
The open government internship was actually found on HN through a link to a networking, chat roulette of sorts. It had something to do with Brazen Careerist and DCTech? (maybe, I forgot the exact name.) I would higly recommend finding somewhere where you can stay for a few months and have a solid experience and reference.
It is an impressive list of items that you have been able to do. It is very practical and something a college/univ education might not provide.
At some point in life (there is still a lot of time for you) you will have to make a decision, whether there is some benefit going to school to improve your theoretical knowledge. The hard part is knowing if that is useful for you :-). It is becoming irrelevant each day with initiatives like coursera/udacity.
Wishing you all the best for a great future ahead.
Yeah, I have heard this. I come from a more design background, I don't plan to get into hardcore programming too deep. As someone said, without a CS degree you probably can't design the next Javascript, or up-and-coming language. This is probably true, but not something I plan on doing anyway.
True, if you intend to work on creating applications (rather than say systems programming), it makes more sense to hone skills with how to work with frameworks/tools.
Obviously having the gift to design as well will put in you in an elite league :).
College may not be required if you're sufficiently self motivated, however I still feel that for the majority of ordinary people, college still makes sense.
If you leave aside a field like tech, which has ample resources for those willing to teach themselves, this is simply not true for most other skilled professions
Regulations aside, would you go to a doctor who was self-taught or live in buildings built by architects and engineers who didn't go to college?
Atleast for the STEM fields, I still feel that college should be an absolute requirement.
Of course this is not meant to criticize your choice, just feel that the whole 'brilliant people don't need college' thing is taken a bit too far.
I wouldn't consider myself brilliant by any means. I just had an early start and really fell in love with the web. The awe of putting something I made online when I was 12 really sparked something that caused what you see in me today.
I agree college is a necessity for some, and it really is a stepping stone for people who don't know what they want to do. Not everyone is as fortunate as me and get to know what they're doing years before they graduate. I'm so thankful for this.
While I'm in the boat of not needing to graduate college, I do feel that going to a good school is important. It's hard to make it on your own and meeting equally motivated, and inspired roommates would do well for someone with an entrepreneurial mind. Most of the stories about top CEO's starting their dorm businesses instead of graduating college still went to great schools.
Of course, if you have plans to work for yourself, then college may or may not be an issue. If however, you only plan on working for others, at some point you WILL hear about positions that are only open to people with a college degree. I have a friend who stepped out of school early to get a job, now he's working nights and weekends to finish his degree so he can advance within his own company, and field.
Again, if you plan on being judged by others, you need to play the game and get the proper badges.
Right on Josh! Engaging in the real world is a bit scarier that sticking with your peers and remaining institutionalized, but your growing the most vital asset any of us can have in this world... BALLS!
I hope you continue to kick ass and maybe inspire some more people to pursue a similar route.
GREAT decision. I just recently graduated with a BA in English. I loved it, but it was ultimately a waste of time. My biggest qualm with higher education is that there's not enough DOING encouraged.
Having said that, two months after graduated in English, I taught myself web development and UI and now work at an SEO agency.
I ended up halfway around the world, in New Zealand. Getting paid well, enjoying what I'm working on.
You won't really have more free time than you have now, your life starts filling up with things that demand your time. So studying will be harder to pick up later.
But doable, I'm studying on the side, inching my way to finishing my degree.
I don't earn less than college graduated peers.
And in the job, if anything, I'm probably more inclined to delve deeper and get a more in-depth understanding because I'm curious as hell and have always had a bit of an inclination to try prove myself vs those who had the benefit of a college education :)
I just lucked out that I was able to get a job doing this, and that programming as a career is so amenable to self-learning, otherwise I'd probably have ended up a lawyer or accountant, or some other job requiring degree study.
For clarifications sake, I consider myself a front-end dev and user experience guy. I like to stay between full fledge designing and full fledge programming. I understand the difference between fairy tell design, and what stuff can actually do. I think that's an important mindset to have.
If you plan on doing hardcore engineering, college is the way to go. I would also say if you are fortunate enough to get into a really good school, and get good scholarships, go for it if you feel it's what you want to do.
You know, there's an awful lot of psychology in interface design. Its not taught in very many places either. It might be worth investigating if you could start learning this kind of stuff on a distance basis so that you could future-proof yourselves to a certain degree.
I don't actually see any reasoning for why you haven't gone to college. It sounds like you're doing cool stuff, but I hope you're not trying to argue 'at 18, without college, I'm doing cool stuff, therefore college is unnecessary for people'.
Have you heard of the 'gap year' idea, which is common in England/Australia? (maybe other places too, but that's where I'm familiar with it). Many people argue that there are cool things you can do at 18 before you go to college, which will then give you some more experience in the world to decide whether you need college, and how you could most gain from it. Personally I'm a big fan of all high school grads being able to take at least a year off before college to learn a bit more about life, it's great that you have taken this opportunity. I'd love to see some more discussion of 'why I decided to do this, and where I think it'll take me'.
Yeah, that's definitely a good point to bring up. I have heard of the gap year, it's gaining traction in the US as well.
I decided to do this because I didn't feel, at the time, there was a college that was affordable, that had a degree that was relevant enough for what I wanted, and would fit my unique personality and approach to things. It was a gut feeling that college really isn't best for me. And it's definitely not a general rule of thumb for everyone.
I'm a self learner and like doing things with my own style and attitude. As far as the where I want it to take me part, I want to have my own startup one day, solve a problem that users care about, make money, and be happy every step of the way. Happy being relative here. Obviously some days will be bad, but you get the idea.
[Edit] What I described above is probably how the majority of HN feels. Ha.
The "gap year(s)" idea is very common where I am from as well (Sweden) and I am a strong proponent of it. Traditionally you squeeze(d) in half a year to a year of military service (not as common anymore as it is now voluntarily), one or two years of some shitty job, and maybe half a year of traveling. Personally I traveled the world as a musician in a band for a while, then I worked two years at an airport throwing bags and then I traveled some more! This way I got both perspective, experience, money and maybe most important of all, I got a strong motivation to take on higher studies. I was longing for the world of academia after standing on the "factory floor".
With that said, I have friends who went directly from high school to university and I have friends who skipped it all together. All of them are doing brilliantly and work with things they are passionate about. Things tend to work themselves out if you have a burning passion for something.
But after I dropped out of college in '98 things didn't work out nearly so well for me, and it was many years before I was able to get some kind of software development career going, even though I had useful skills before I was in the 10th grade. Still not going great (OK though) and people always hold the lack of a degree over my head.
If I could go back in time and put in those two more years of school I would. Not because I think that college really makes a lot of sense, but in the context of our dated society it is still a better choice I think if you can put up with it.
If you are a computer geek, you don't NEED a degree if you are properly motivated, but good luck job hunting for a lot of careers (accountant, civil engineer, teacher, historian, psychologist, ETC). I personally think that technical schools are great. Skip all the elective and arts garbage that you have to take in college.
BTW, I was just talking to a civil engineer last night at the gym (after a game of basketball). He said that he (and other civil engineers) learned the majority of his skills on the job, and not during college (I have found this to be true in software dev as well). The problem with many of the jobs that I listed though is that you can't even get your foot in the door to those careers without a degree.
> He said that he (and other civil engineers) learned the majority of his skills on the job, and not during college (I have found this to be true in software dev as well).
That may well be the case, but these skills often build on material that was learned in college.
Kudos to you. I tried to go down this path, and ended up going back to school after I ended up dealing with an unfortunate amount of ageism and related flack for being young and not having a degree (I graduated HS at 16 and dropped out of college at 18. At 21, I've returned to school full time.) Additionally, in retrospect, I wasn't mature enough to make the plunge. You seem to be.
If I may presume to dispense a little advice. Work on your writing skills. I read your blog and lots of little errors jumped out at me. Strunk and White is invaluable. I find myself consulting it daily. While I have a fairly large skill set, writing is the most useful.
I think it's fantastic that things are going well for you. I wish you the absolute best.
I do, however, wonder how much of the backlash against college is coming from liberal arts majors that ran up crazy debt while earning a degree that doesn't immediately lead to high paying work. I did a lot of the same sort of things the OP is talking about when I was his age (it was 14 years ago, though, so there were some differences, but it was similar), and I managed a college course load. I graduated in 2003 without debt (state school, didn't go crazy on the weekends, worked hard), and while I would have loved to have the extra time that you have now, over the last decade having a degree (even a silly BA Political Science like I have) has been really, _really_ useful. Most of the jobs I've had since graduation wouldn't have even looked at my resume without that degree on it.
Things are changing and it's becoming easier to show off your skills without a piece of paper proving that you meet some university's curriculum requirements, but given the relatively low real costs of a college education, I'd be hard pressed to recommend anyone not get one.
What if he live in a country where hacker news is hardly known and the society values a degree very highly and no matter how well you perform and that there is always a glass ceiling to block non degree holders from rising up.
It sounds like you've had a great post-education career! Keep it up! That said, as a current senior undergraduate computer science major, I still think that college is an invaluable resource, or at the very least post-secondary classes. Working is great--it teaches you skills for working with others, how to use tools, and how to live in the real world. But education is not necessarily those things.
Go to college if you want not just a technical background, but theoretical grounding in ideas. I'm not going to college because I want to learn how to write code in JavaScript. (I learned that on my own time.) Introductory classes may do that (Arizona State gives you Introduction to Java as a freshman CS course), but nearly all my other computer science classes have been about just that--computer science. Computer science is not programming. It's applied mathematics. Computer science teaches you not only what is possible through computing, but how to judge ideas about computing and how to apply computing through computers.
Again, college is not a necessity. If you don't need it for your career, I have absolutely no objection to that. However, I'm incredibly grateful for the education college has provided me. (Make all the Arizona State jokes you want, but we have a fine CS department.) Computer science gives students an engineering toolset. Programming is not engineering; rather, programming is accomplished through engineering. This is why I believe in college for programmers; good programmers are engineers, first and foremost.
I went to college for four years but didn't graduate. Today I'm having a great time coding and sys adminning in nyc. I enjoyed college times, but there's no way you could con me today into thinking it was at all necessary from an economic perspective. I think of college as a luxury good spot, not as an economic investment. So I kind of agree with you on one hand, even though I have a softspot for college. Point is this: college has positives, but an efficient way to spend 4yrs developing skills is not it.
Well, since you didn't graduate, you are missing an important part of college. As others have mentioned, this may be a problem later in life. I would agree with your main point.
Also, I am not sure how you could go to college for 4 years (my comp sci * maths courses were 3 years), and not graduate?
Some colleges have longer plans of study. My school (Georgia Institute of Technology) was ~120 semester-based credit hours, and if you took 17-18 credit hours a semester you could graduate in 4 years. After freshman or sophomore year you really didn't take more than 13-16, which automatically puts you on a 5 year plan. That's also assuming you didn't fail any courses, which was extremely possible in some programs of study. Aerospace Engineering was a 5-6 year major for most, and it wasn't uncommon to see 7th year Aerospace majors.
Congratulations on your early successes. That's always very important, it'll keep you motivated through all the various adversity yet to come. I don't believe for a second that college is necessary, so long as you're highly self motivated. For most people edu + job/career is a good choice, I don't think there's much debate about that. It doesn't fit for everybody though.
I can relate to your choices. I dropped out of high school when I was a few weeks shy of graduation, in 1999. The dotcom boom was in full swing. When I ran across the Web for the first time in 1995 as a teenager, I immediately knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
I think dropping out was a line in the sand for me, by crossing it I knew I would be intentionally making it that much harder to ever have a 'normal' career or job. There was no going back. I never wanted to work for anybody else, I wanted to build Web businesses.
At the time, the Web seemed like a piece of technology imported from a century into the future. I was eager to get started. About 99% of the time I haven't regretted my decision. If it's in your blood, it's in your blood, I can't be wired any other way, and I'm sure a lot of other people are the same.
First of all, congratulations Josh and thanks for posting. It's great to hear a young person taking such a deliberate path and I'm sure it will be valuable to other to hear about. Please keep posting.
Slightly tangental, the reason college is/will be so hard to replace is that we are not sure or can't agree what it's even for. If we had a thread about it everyone would have very different opinions. In some sense it feels like trying to replace parents or peers. You can't really break down what they're for and try to replace it.
Keep on writing and working on your writing skills. There were times at which I felt that your writing got in the way of the ideas you were trying to express.
One other thing that stuck out to me was that it seems like discouragements from others have really gotten to you despite your insistence that they don't matter. Don't mind the haters and keep on working hard! Good luck.
I was a philosophy major, and dropped out after 2.5 years. My career had been evolving throughout that entire time, and at some point I had to make a choice. After my second job, of six or so, nobody was even remotely interested in my education background, to the point where I deleted the entire section out of my resume with no material consequences whatsoever.
In this profession (excluding academia and high R&D, or specialisations requiring scientific background, or management layers that are still highly credential-driven) , it's all about what you can do. It's amazingly democratic. A degree is only used to differentiate a candidate from a random person off the street, and only in the absence of any other information about them, any meaningful experience, etc. The moment any of that comes into play, the degree becomes vanishingly insignificant.
The caveat, of course, is that if your career path takes you in that direction of doing something more than slinging code or running a small company, which gets increasingly likely as you get older, conservatise, want to get married, the works, you will be faced with severe barriers to entry in many places that are highly credential-dependent, if only through sheer institutional inertia, the force of custom, habit, and tradition, etc. While I do find it likely that these barriers are likely to become less durable in the future, in keeping with the general existential crisis of the received universal higher education narrative and the tendency toward greater meritocratic transparency in many professions (assisted by technology-fostered structural changes), there are certain things you will almost certainly never be able to do without the piece of paper, whether or not you'll ever need to use what you learned to get it.
125 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 185 ms ] threadA nitpick on spelling/word usage (sorry): I think instead of "in times of desparity" you want "in times of desperation". "In times of disparity" would be applied to something like a country.
you should change it to desperation
This message has been brought to you by Clonazepam and too much late-night circuit analysis... (I'll save the regret for not waiting to write later until the morning)
Edit: I should credit my fiancée who is halfway through the last program that I left– she has much more patience for all of things that I would only see as a poor use of time (i.e. taking introductory classes in which I already have 20+ credits at junior or senior level). Otherwise perhaps I'd be a bitter sap, which is probably how I come off anyway after a couple days of no sleep. Dead ends for me are not for her and vice versa, so it's all rather interesting.
There's no shame in saying that you weren't ready for it then. It doesn't mean you couldn't handle the material, or the environment, or anything... it just means that you had some potential which, at that time, was not going to be fulfilled by doing whatever. 5, 10, 20 years later, not only will your potential have grown but so too the chance of doing so much more with it. I'm still younger than all of my classmates but I feel like I have the same approach as an old man– I came to learn, with the added benefit that all the work I do goes deeper with my additional experiences. So err, "Keep on rockin' in the free world..." but don't be afraid to take home the royalties after you're famous.
Can you explain the open government intern a bit more in detail? How was it that you were able to acquire it...I too would like to do something similar and I have felt an inclination to abandon post-secondary education.
http://codeforamerica.org/
The open government internship was actually found on HN through a link to a networking, chat roulette of sorts. It had something to do with Brazen Careerist and DCTech? (maybe, I forgot the exact name.) I would higly recommend finding somewhere where you can stay for a few months and have a solid experience and reference.
At some point in life (there is still a lot of time for you) you will have to make a decision, whether there is some benefit going to school to improve your theoretical knowledge. The hard part is knowing if that is useful for you :-). It is becoming irrelevant each day with initiatives like coursera/udacity.
Wishing you all the best for a great future ahead.
Obviously having the gift to design as well will put in you in an elite league :).
If you leave aside a field like tech, which has ample resources for those willing to teach themselves, this is simply not true for most other skilled professions
Regulations aside, would you go to a doctor who was self-taught or live in buildings built by architects and engineers who didn't go to college?
Atleast for the STEM fields, I still feel that college should be an absolute requirement.
Of course this is not meant to criticize your choice, just feel that the whole 'brilliant people don't need college' thing is taken a bit too far.
I agree college is a necessity for some, and it really is a stepping stone for people who don't know what they want to do. Not everyone is as fortunate as me and get to know what they're doing years before they graduate. I'm so thankful for this.
Of course, if you have plans to work for yourself, then college may or may not be an issue. If however, you only plan on working for others, at some point you WILL hear about positions that are only open to people with a college degree. I have a friend who stepped out of school early to get a job, now he's working nights and weekends to finish his degree so he can advance within his own company, and field.
Again, if you plan on being judged by others, you need to play the game and get the proper badges.
I hope you continue to kick ass and maybe inspire some more people to pursue a similar route.
Having said that, two months after graduated in English, I taught myself web development and UI and now work at an SEO agency.
I ended up halfway around the world, in New Zealand. Getting paid well, enjoying what I'm working on.
You won't really have more free time than you have now, your life starts filling up with things that demand your time. So studying will be harder to pick up later.
But doable, I'm studying on the side, inching my way to finishing my degree.
I don't earn less than college graduated peers.
And in the job, if anything, I'm probably more inclined to delve deeper and get a more in-depth understanding because I'm curious as hell and have always had a bit of an inclination to try prove myself vs those who had the benefit of a college education :)
I just lucked out that I was able to get a job doing this, and that programming as a career is so amenable to self-learning, otherwise I'd probably have ended up a lawyer or accountant, or some other job requiring degree study.
Good luck!
If you plan on doing hardcore engineering, college is the way to go. I would also say if you are fortunate enough to get into a really good school, and get good scholarships, go for it if you feel it's what you want to do.
[edit: word choice]
I decided to do this because I didn't feel, at the time, there was a college that was affordable, that had a degree that was relevant enough for what I wanted, and would fit my unique personality and approach to things. It was a gut feeling that college really isn't best for me. And it's definitely not a general rule of thumb for everyone.
I'm a self learner and like doing things with my own style and attitude. As far as the where I want it to take me part, I want to have my own startup one day, solve a problem that users care about, make money, and be happy every step of the way. Happy being relative here. Obviously some days will be bad, but you get the idea.
[Edit] What I described above is probably how the majority of HN feels. Ha.
With that said, I have friends who went directly from high school to university and I have friends who skipped it all together. All of them are doing brilliantly and work with things they are passionate about. Things tend to work themselves out if you have a burning passion for something.
But after I dropped out of college in '98 things didn't work out nearly so well for me, and it was many years before I was able to get some kind of software development career going, even though I had useful skills before I was in the 10th grade. Still not going great (OK though) and people always hold the lack of a degree over my head.
If I could go back in time and put in those two more years of school I would. Not because I think that college really makes a lot of sense, but in the context of our dated society it is still a better choice I think if you can put up with it.
BTW, I was just talking to a civil engineer last night at the gym (after a game of basketball). He said that he (and other civil engineers) learned the majority of his skills on the job, and not during college (I have found this to be true in software dev as well). The problem with many of the jobs that I listed though is that you can't even get your foot in the door to those careers without a degree.
That may well be the case, but these skills often build on material that was learned in college.
If I may presume to dispense a little advice. Work on your writing skills. I read your blog and lots of little errors jumped out at me. Strunk and White is invaluable. I find myself consulting it daily. While I have a fairly large skill set, writing is the most useful.
I do, however, wonder how much of the backlash against college is coming from liberal arts majors that ran up crazy debt while earning a degree that doesn't immediately lead to high paying work. I did a lot of the same sort of things the OP is talking about when I was his age (it was 14 years ago, though, so there were some differences, but it was similar), and I managed a college course load. I graduated in 2003 without debt (state school, didn't go crazy on the weekends, worked hard), and while I would have loved to have the extra time that you have now, over the last decade having a degree (even a silly BA Political Science like I have) has been really, _really_ useful. Most of the jobs I've had since graduation wouldn't have even looked at my resume without that degree on it.
Things are changing and it's becoming easier to show off your skills without a piece of paper proving that you meet some university's curriculum requirements, but given the relatively low real costs of a college education, I'd be hard pressed to recommend anyone not get one.
Will he be as successful?
Go to college if you want not just a technical background, but theoretical grounding in ideas. I'm not going to college because I want to learn how to write code in JavaScript. (I learned that on my own time.) Introductory classes may do that (Arizona State gives you Introduction to Java as a freshman CS course), but nearly all my other computer science classes have been about just that--computer science. Computer science is not programming. It's applied mathematics. Computer science teaches you not only what is possible through computing, but how to judge ideas about computing and how to apply computing through computers.
Again, college is not a necessity. If you don't need it for your career, I have absolutely no objection to that. However, I'm incredibly grateful for the education college has provided me. (Make all the Arizona State jokes you want, but we have a fine CS department.) Computer science gives students an engineering toolset. Programming is not engineering; rather, programming is accomplished through engineering. This is why I believe in college for programmers; good programmers are engineers, first and foremost.
Also, I am not sure how you could go to college for 4 years (my comp sci * maths courses were 3 years), and not graduate?
I can relate to your choices. I dropped out of high school when I was a few weeks shy of graduation, in 1999. The dotcom boom was in full swing. When I ran across the Web for the first time in 1995 as a teenager, I immediately knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
I think dropping out was a line in the sand for me, by crossing it I knew I would be intentionally making it that much harder to ever have a 'normal' career or job. There was no going back. I never wanted to work for anybody else, I wanted to build Web businesses.
At the time, the Web seemed like a piece of technology imported from a century into the future. I was eager to get started. About 99% of the time I haven't regretted my decision. If it's in your blood, it's in your blood, I can't be wired any other way, and I'm sure a lot of other people are the same.
Slightly tangental, the reason college is/will be so hard to replace is that we are not sure or can't agree what it's even for. If we had a thread about it everyone would have very different opinions. In some sense it feels like trying to replace parents or peers. You can't really break down what they're for and try to replace it.
In this profession (excluding academia and high R&D, or specialisations requiring scientific background, or management layers that are still highly credential-driven) , it's all about what you can do. It's amazingly democratic. A degree is only used to differentiate a candidate from a random person off the street, and only in the absence of any other information about them, any meaningful experience, etc. The moment any of that comes into play, the degree becomes vanishingly insignificant.
The caveat, of course, is that if your career path takes you in that direction of doing something more than slinging code or running a small company, which gets increasingly likely as you get older, conservatise, want to get married, the works, you will be faced with severe barriers to entry in many places that are highly credential-dependent, if only through sheer institutional inertia, the force of custom, habit, and tradition, etc. While I do find it likely that these barriers are likely to become less durable in the future, in keeping with the general existential crisis of the received universal higher education narrative and the tendency toward greater meritocratic transparency in many professions (assisted by technology-fostered structural changes), there are certain things you will almost certainly never be able to do without the piece of paper, whether or not you'll ever need to use what you learned to get it.