tl;dr I should have been able to get a 4 year degree after taking 3-4 classes. Why do people who have equivalent education need to _waste_ 4 years of their life

tl;dr I should have been able to get a 4 year degree after taking 3-4 classes. Why do people who have equivalent education need to _waste_ 4 years of their life? I think that the largest problem is that there is no way for people who have achieved the equivalent or more of a college education to gain the same recognition. But possibly that is just because it affects me directly. While working a technician type job for years with lots of downtime, I studied CS at home and with my work downtime. I took lots of the free courses from the elite universities and finished them. I read lots of good book, most of the No Starch Press books, and did all the exercises. Then I had the money to fund a four year degree, with high expectations for the higher level classes I persisted through the absolutely painfully trivial, tedious work. I got anxious about wasting so much time not learning, after I was not just out of high school. I've burnt out on busywork, started neglecting schoolwork for stuff that actually improved my skill, or to drill way deeper into some interesting bit of a class than needed to get to something challenging. I ignored school for side projects that stretched my legs. It really hit when I took 300-400 level courses and realized that i really wouldn't learn anything CS at all. I've even helped nearly 10 other students learn Python which the school doesn't even teach pair programming with them on a very non-trivial project. But now here I am, way more advanced and capable than a standard graduate, terrible GPA, not going to graduate, and no job opportunities. I don't even care how much I make, I like programming, I like making things, I like solving problems. Probably going to have to go back to what I was doing. That said I did pick up a couple math tricks, but _wasting_ 4 years of my life for 3-4 good classes which could have been taken in 3 months, not even remotely worth it. Been here for a while but using a throwaway for obvious reasons.