I wish I could speak for professions such as Medicine or Law, but I can't. I can however speak for an Engineering degree. The following is an example of what a

I wish I could speak for professions such as Medicine or Law, but I can't. I can however speak for an Engineering degree. The following is an example of what a typical CS undergraduate student would study in the US[1]: ● AL - Algorithms and Complexity ● AR - Architecture and Organization ● CN - Computational Science ● DS - Discrete Structures ● GV - Graphics and Visualization ● HCI - Human-Computer Interaction ● IAS - Information Assurance and Security ● IM - Information Management ● IS - Intelligent Systems ● NC - Networking and Communications ● OS - Operating Systems ● PBD - Platform-based Development ● PD - Parallel and Distributed Computing ● PL - Programming Languages ● SDF - Software Development Fundamentals ● SE - Software Engineering ● SF - Systems Fundamentals ● SP - Social Issues and Professional Practice A typical 4 year undergraduate degree covers 120 credits typically divided among 40 (3 credits each) or more subjects. In addition to the 18 or so above the rest of the subjects include subjects in primary engineering, mathematics, electronics, mechanics, humanities and several others in addition to all the related practical/lab work. Most lay people assume that getting a degree in CS means learning HTML, CSS, one or two programming languages and most possibly some CRUD application development with a database backend. Hence the prevalence of 'boot camps' of various natures that create 'rock stars'. There is no way in heck that a person who is not forced into the degree track is going to be motivated enough to study all of this stuff. A lot of this is very very hard. Now, after studying all of this, do you think you will use even a small fraction of this in the types of jobs a typical IT/software consultant would do in 90% of the run of the mill jobs out there. NO. However the degree exposed you to subjects that you would never be exposed to unless you were in that field. And this is only an undergraduate degree. There is more to a degree that what you can learn by self motivation. At least in the technical space. [1] Computer Science Curricula 2013; ACM/IEEE Computer Society https://www.acm.org/education/CS2013-final-report.pdf https://www.acm.org/education/CS2013-final-report.pdf