IMO CS is necessary to advance the state of the art. And while I completely agree that many computing/programming tasks currently do not necessarily require a C

IMO CS is necessary to advance the state of the art. And while I completely agree that many computing/programming tasks currently do not necessarily require a CS degree, there is no guarentee that will always be the case. As for my myself, I studied roughly 3 years of computer science before I dropped out to work full-time, so I only have a half-finished bachelors degree. I wont say I regret it, because the last 5-6 years of being partner in a startup and earning a good pay-check have been fun. But I very much do regret not being able to completely grasp all the new interesting research papers that are coming out. Nothing is more frustrating than reading a research paper, and knowing enough to be able to grasp that this algorithm could improve some part of your system, but then being unable to decipher/implement it, because one have forgotten(or not learned) parts of the mathematical notation/background. In other words being able to see the solution, but the solution being juuust out of your grasp. I hope down the road to be able to compensate for this problem by hiring smarter guys than myself that DID finish their CS degree :) Also another benefit of studying CS is that around year 2-3 you will be introduced to some subject matter that I at least personally am pretty sure I would never have heard of otherwise. I found stuff like operations research and integer programming very interesting. I havent yet have had opportunity to use any of it in the "real world", but its nice knowing whats out there, who knows it might come in handy a few years down the road in some other venture.