I can't tell you whether staying in school right now is a good idea for you or not, but maybe my story will give you an interesting case study. I went to Colum

I can't tell you whether staying in school right now is a good idea for you or not, but maybe my story will give you an interesting case study. I went to Columbia straight out of high school in 1994. My birthday is in October so when i started i was 17. In my first year i had to take a lot of required courses that i wasn't that interested in and my grades were not very good. My dad liked to complain to me about the cost of my school and although he never bothered me about my low scores, i felt pretty bad about it. Meanwhile, i met this guy while i was in high school and his father was ceo of an old software company in new York so he got me a job there for the summer, and i continued working part time while in university as well. I was testing a windows app that was written by a team of 10 developers. My performance at work was much better than at school, so I found it more rewarding. As it turns out, the automated testing software we were using was a hot technology and someone told me i could get a consulting gig at ge capital if i dropped out. So i made the decision to do that after completing only 3 semesters. My mother was pretty upset , but my father didn't really mind too much. Unfortunately, that consulting gig was canceled pretty soon after i started but i had made some contacts and i got a real programming job at a different ge company. This was 1995 and i was 19. I continued contract software development at a bunch of big and small companies for the next few years with few issues about having dropped out. In 2000 i left a secure contract at Goldman Sachs to try a startup on my own. When that didn't work out, it was the depth of the NYC job market downturn in 2001 and it took me 4 or 5 months to find a job. Having been a contractor and business owner i was not eligible for unemployment. I don't know if having a degree during that time would have helped me get a job faster, but i did hear about it from recruiters and think about it a lot during that time. My next job turned out to be with good people so i switched to full time and they paid for me to go back to school at night and i got a degree from the CUNY ba program in 2005. I haven't been out of work since then but mostly that's because i lucked out being at a mortgage company that failed right at the begining of the crisis in 07 and my next shop has been very successful in weathering the downturn. I see a lot of comments here about how if you know what you're doing and you're a good software engineer then you will always have an easy time finding work. This is just not true. When supply of software engineers outstrips demand in the market where you are looking for work it becomes difficult to get a job. It is during these times that you may have trouble since you don't have a degree. Also, if you get to a point where you want to advance beyond software development into a business side or management role, you may have trouble based on your lack of credentials. The other point to understand that is directly related to your question is that as you get older you demand a higher salary. This makes it harder to get work. There are fewer jobs for people at the higher salary levels so again, your credentials may come into play more when you're 10 - 15 years in, seeking new work and asking to be paid significantly more than someone with 5 years experience.