Well... Talking as European my answer is "it's depend". Degrees and school solve different problems: degrees serve as a way to "know enough" about someone othe

Well... Talking as European my answer is "it's depend". Degrees and school solve different problems: degrees serve as a way to "know enough" about someone otherwise unknown to assign a job, also solve some legal problem in that process; schools are a way to spread not only knowledge per se (notionism) but also to transmit a paradigm, a way to grow personal knowledge. So, without a degree you may encounter "bureaucratic" problems/obstacles or at least "suspect" in your work's career. Without a school you can learn MANY things, perhaps more than that you can learn at school in the same time, but it's hard to say if you can learn them with a good ontological method or not. At school it's the same: if you encounter a good teacher you may learn good paradigms not only "know how", otherwise you may only lost time and eventually money (depending on your's country education system). Also even if you are lucky you still need experience, not only paradigms and mere knowledge. The way and the order/time you'll follow to get them... Well it's really individual, not standardizable, so you can't IMVHO get ANY generally valid answer. You know ingredients, how to combine them it's your's personal recipe to be build accordingly to your personal taste, kitchen, tools and time you have and want. For the rest, in my experience USA/UK/English-world school in general tend to be too notionistic, they tend to form "skilled Ford model workers" not real "technician" or "autonomous thinking guys, European ones tent to be too detached from the real world so they form "autonomous thinking children" they need to grow in the "outside"/real world for some years after. Also in the USA/English world it's generally more valued experience/history than competence mostly because it's easier to check than really get to know someone. In EU world it's more valued traditional qualifications... As a bottomline: it doen't really matter how much effort you put if you do not really want to do something so if you force yourself in a school or in autonomous learning results will still be poor. You need to desire and need something to really accomplish it. So to say that if you can, as you can, it's better to follow your dream not a pre-defined path by someone else. it may not be ideal, it may not produce better result but being you'r own path it will make you more free and happy than anything else. Sorry for my English, not my motherlanguage...