> I'm a strong proponent of a CS university education, as opposed to something like a bootcamp, for this very reason.
The value proposition of a university education is something of a moving goalpost for most people. It's not even about what you learned but how exclusive and prestigious the institution was. Or how uncomfortable and sleep deprived your experience was. If the value of a university degree were based on a skillset that could be proven, then the need for exclusive accreditation could be replaced with a simple unit test - and education would be called "training" and everyone would feel much less smug about not being "blue collar". Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
I actually do strongly agree with you on abolishing a degree as a requirement and replacing degrees with a simple test to prove your competence. I only used “CS university education” as a proxy for an in-depth education that can be difficult (but not impossible) to achieve with self-teaching.
The value proposition of a university education is something of a moving goalpost for most people. It's not even about what you learned but how exclusive and prestigious the institution was. Or how uncomfortable and sleep deprived your experience was. If the value of a university degree were based on a skillset that could be proven, then the need for exclusive accreditation could be replaced with a simple unit test - and education would be called "training" and everyone would feel much less smug about not being "blue collar". Thank you for coming to my TED talk.