1. CS programs tend to focus on fundamentals that are building blocks for many things in the industry, even with a fast-pace of change (or more often high level

1. CS programs tend to focus on fundamentals that are building blocks for many things in the industry, even with a fast-pace of change (or more often high level of churn) so "keeping up" is probably better left to specialized programs or bootcamps to teach very specific technology rather than academic/foundational principles. However it'd probably serve CS tracks well to introduce something like a CompTIA A+ course as a 101 class since a lot of the tracks are predicated on students knowing the basics of a computer, which is increasingly less common as the post-PC era kids are becoming college aged. 2. It depends. There aren't really any shortcuts to becoming a well-versed or competent engineer. Being self-taught still requires putting in as many hours (or probably much, much more) than going through a traditional 4yr CS program and that probably is a much more difficult path in almost every case. 3. I don't know how much weight is put on this in general, but my experience is that not having a degree results in a lot of applications being discarded immediately. I personally don't care about someone's background as long as they know what they are doing or are capable learners. 4. I think this is kind of flipping in the opposite direction in the last handful of years. There was a sweet spot in the 2010s where self-teaching using online resources was very doable and it wasn't terribly hard to find high quality content- but with the rise of CV-boosting blogspam that just rewrites the "Getting Started" page of a popular framework (a large chunk of Medium) and AI-generated content being pumped to the top of web search results it is becoming very difficult to find high-quality, accurate content to base learning off of and I think returning to books or forms of learning provided by traditional ed will become more common as there is some curation and signals for quality. 5. My background is self-taught through being generally interested in computers and just learning anything I could through using Linux/FOSS tools/engaging with various communities adjacent to those interests. College wasn't accessible to me for cost reasons, so I got a job as a tech support rep after high school to get a foot in the door of a software company and climbed through QA to software engineer, to infrastructure, devops and whatever else in-between. I think college is still the best path for most people because self-learning either requires insane amounts of discipline or an unusually deep interest in computers and tech for its own sake (not just as a means to an end of a job). I also think the tech industry has matured a lot and the era of getting hired by being self-taught with some demonstrable skills is over just due to the sheer volume of job seekers in the industry and a degree being the minimum gate used when evaluating new hires.