What I am assuming is that someone who doesn't have a college degree has this knowledge in bits and pieces, accumulated randomly over the years. I don't mean to

What I am assuming is that someone who doesn't have a college degree has this knowledge in bits and pieces, accumulated randomly over the years. I don't mean to imply that knowledge accumulated in that way is insufficient in order to be a balls-out startup founder, or have a very high-paying job as a software engineer. I left high school having a lot of programming experience already under my belt, and by then I've read quite a few CS books (the two "programming pearls", and the two "turing omnibus" books), and since then I've met quite a few people like myself, so a large part of what you are saying resonates with me. However, I would argue that every so often there are problems that one encounters in software engineering for which a haphazard, practical education is insufficient, and only a very rigorous, "from the ground-up" education will do. For example, the sort of position that is nowadays advertised as a "data scientist", which is a very complex conglomerate of advanced mathematics and computer science. I've never met someone who is a self-educated, no-college-degree data scientist, or audio-video-photo compression expert, or a computational finance guy. I will readily admit my limited sample, and I would be happy if you proved me wrong. Still - what concerns me is that the general view is that formal education is a waste, and what is consistently left aside is that there are many things that one can do for which a haphazard education is simply not enough.