I ended up paying $23k for a piece of paper that I'm pretty sure hasn't done me any good. I learned a little, but not much, and I could have learned it on my o

I ended up paying $23k for a piece of paper that I'm pretty sure hasn't done me any good. I learned a little, but not much, and I could have learned it on my own anyhow. Most of it I already knew. Yet I'm still not willing to say I wasted that time and money. There's still some chance that it'll turn out to be really valuable, and getting through the system helped with some of my issues with valuation of my own abilities. When I eventually got a job, they didn't care about my paperwork. In fact, my resume was worse than the other candidate's, and they said so. What got me the job was the BrainBench tests they put me through. Without those, I would not have gotten that first job. (Actually, it was the second, but the first was rather non-traditional and before college.) Anyhow, I think the value of these anecdotes is to let people know that there are alternatives to traditional education. It's not right for everyone, or even most people, but you shouldn't feel railroaded into it. If you have the skills to do the job already, you should consider just going and getting a job, instead.