No, but it helps. Autodidacts are rare (possibly not on this site, but in general), and few people who haven't been to college even know what they don't know.

No, but it helps. Autodidacts are rare (possibly not on this site, but in general), and few people who haven't been to college even know what they don't know. Unfortunately a large proportion of college grads are equally clueless. College is a place where you can get an education, but nobody's going to insist, and neither degree nor GPA is any indication one way or another. What's worse, people who learned next-to-nothing in college don't even know that they don't know anything, and they can interview quite well. As the numerous HN threads about hiring and interviews attest, it's murderously difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.