My hypothesis is that a CS education would be most useful after you have already spent 5-10 years in industry. Unfortunately for most people life just isn't structured in a way to allow for full time education later in life.
I've believed for a long time now that most people would be better off spending a few years in "the real world" before they were admitted to a university. Right now, for many if not most Americans at least, college is an unsupervised extension of high school. It's treated that way not just by patrons but also their parents and administrators. The requisite maturity just isn't there.
Interestingly, historically, there's usually been a war or famine or other hardship that has forced people in their late teens to grow up quickly. Is our society really better on a macro level for the ease that teenagers have now?
Additionally, schooling after a few years as an apprentice is extremely helpful in that you have a familiarity and context about the field and can instantly filter the busy work from the useful information. One may also be in better financial condition by that point, making loans less necessary and ultimately saving the student a lot of money.
Personally I plan to encourage my children to do something else for a few years before they enter post-secondary education (if they plan to do so at all).
one of the thing's I've learned is that the assumptions I make nearly always come back and bite me. I think that's what's happening to you here.
The assumption you appear to be making is that a self taught programmer is one who tries but fails to gain acceptance to a CS course, so then has to teach themselves.
I'd classify myself as self taught because I've been writing code since my pre-teen years in the 80's. I also did an engineering degree which helped give me a much better theoretical grounding
