College seems to be a thing to get done quickly, and cheaply. Probably even with the easiest courses. Why do I say that? - The more time you spend, the more ti

College seems to be a thing to get done quickly, and cheaply. Probably even with the easiest courses. Why do I say that? - The more time you spend, the more time you're not working and making money/experience. You're also in a quite restricted social group with only the professors providing contact with older, more experienced people. - There really is nothing you can learn in college that isn't public knowledge. At best you get a better idea of what the experts think is important in a field. So for instance I didn't read Marxist or Austrian economics. - Nobody is going to know whether you did that advanced course on category theory for coders. I'm sure it's both interesting and relevant, but you have more time to learn this yourself, when you're not being judged by an exam. - You'll also learn things better when you're not constantly thinking about proving it on an exam. - Everything is college is really an intro. A really evil one where you're asked to fly over some field and then get asked some very specific questions when it comes to exam time. - Of course there are things that really are work relevant at college, especially programming related stuff. It's hard to know what they are as a novice, but looking at it now it seems anything where you're in the practice of using a repo and iterating a solution is what you're after, or using common tools like git or tmux (there's a lot). That can occur in many types of courses though, whether it's systems or human interface and so on. Since there's a lot of Americans here, and I have some experience of that system, I'd say go to Europe. Or the UK, if you like keeping it in English. In Europe, most of the courses are very specific and short. I got a Masters degree 4 years after high school, and I wasn't even at uni for most of the year (3x8 weeks a year), so in theory it could have all been done in 2 years. Which puts into perspective how much you're actually learning there.