I'll start by saying I have no problem with degrees and wish I had the time and money for one. Working in infosec, I have seen really smart hackers who have no

I'll start by saying I have no problem with degrees and wish I had the time and money for one. Working in infosec, I have seen really smart hackers who have no degrees and talented folks with degrees. Degrees simply can't tell you how talented a person is. That said, they do tell you how adaptable a person can be to a corporate environment if they ever work in management. But also, degrees technical folks tend to think very much in a box or in a "political" mindset that you see in academia (teacher's pet, death by powerpoint,etc...). You would think college teaches people to think outside of the box but many have the "this is how we did it in school" mindset which is hard to unlearn and even grads from unk's that have respectable infosec programs lack some very basic undersranding of infosec fundamentals or awareness of current trends in offense or defense. Now my speculation is that college spends too much time giving students broad initial exposure and mostly in a theoretical framework. For at least half of a bachelor's degree they don't even touch the subject of what they majored in. Someone who has passion for the work and hands on IT or programming experience is much more likely to succeed than someone who relied on being spoonfed at school. But like I said, you do get talented people with degrees, it just doesn't tell you on it's own if they are qualified or not. I personally consider the modern college system an ancient holdover from british colonial era. Technology has changed too much to be this inflexible to education.