Higher education is what you make of it. I spent every moment I wasn't working on class work working on side-projects. So I killed two birds with one stone. If

Higher education is what you make of it. I spent every moment I wasn't working on class work working on side-projects. So I killed two birds with one stone. If you do college right (go above and beyond class work, absorb everything) you can come out with the equivalent of ten years experience in four but if you do it wrong (coast by) you can come out with negative return. College also exposed me to a lot I wouldn't have been exposed to otherwise like operating system design, AI, physics, statistics, calculus, and compiler design. I also got a high-profile internship through my school and THAT looked extremely good on my resume. However, as a hiring manager I almost never consider the degree when hiring. The candidates get the same questions no matter what. In fact, a doctorate is almost always a negative signal. I have never hired someone straight out of a doctorate. In my case they have always spectacularly fail the coding part of the interview. In short: you get what you put in. If you can afford to spend four years with little to no pay it is an awesome experience (in my opinion). But it doesn't make or break you.