Yes, if you are good enough, you do not need a college degree. Good enough is somewhere between the skills of a skilled college graduate and someone like Georg

Yes, if you are good enough, you do not need a college degree. Good enough is somewhere between the skills of a skilled college graduate and someone like George Hotz, the hacker who jail broke the iPhone and read the latest AI/ML papers to start his own self-driving car project. For the rest of us, an engineering college degree signals that we made it through the accreditation gauntlet. The professional organizations control the accreditation. Medical school enrollment is strictly limited by the number of residency spots which are funded by the US government. The AMA controls the former, as it could easily expand the supply to lower the direct costs. An argument can be made that a MIT ChemE degree is more difficult to obtain than one from Cal State Poly. However, as long as each school is accredited by ABET, there is a baseline level of knowledge that each graduate of the ChemE program in any ABET-accredited school should obtain. Software engineering is a term I personally hate, as there is no way to engineer software like a bridge. No standards, no stable technology.