I agree that university is useful in that it makes you take classes. I was becoming a reasonably competent programmer before I started university, and for every

I agree that university is useful in that it makes you take classes. I was becoming a reasonably competent programmer before I started university, and for every topic that I was interested in, I believe I could have learned it on my own. I had no interest in database systems; it looked boring to me. My schedule and class requirements had a hole in it, and I took a database class. I'm glad I did. I did want to learn Lisp, but I wasn't getting my head wrapped around it on my own, and was content to not push myself and just stayed with C. Then I took a language interpretation class and was forced to use Lisp. After a week or so the basic concepts clicked, and now I greatly enjoy Lisp. But I wasn't forcing myself to learn it. I also ended up studying a bunch of other totally unrelated things that I wouldn't have on my own, at least not any time on the visible horizon: Russian history, economics, Spanish language, development of jazz music, public speaking... and I feel I'm overall better for it, partly because of what I learned in these classes, and partly because it made me realize there are interesting things to learn all over the place, not just in my favorite areas of study. That said, if I've ever used any of this stuff that I didn't learn on my own in my actual work, I'm not aware of it. But that doesn't mean I'm not happy that I went through university.