Generally there is no way for one degree to get you 'a broad base of understanding across a wide variety of areas'. Most degrees are going to get you a semi-dee

Generally there is no way for one degree to get you 'a broad base of understanding across a wide variety of areas'. Most degrees are going to get you a semi-deep understanding of only a couple area, and then a very shallow understanding of a few more. My university went into a semi-deep understanding of complexity theory, graph theory, logic and a few areas relating to bioinformatics. I also got a shallow introduction to logic gates, assembler languages, java, etc etc. Most university degrees are similar with the emphasis changing around a bit. I feel a university degree is still very important as it gives you something far greater than a few pieces of theory: an understanding of how to learn more. Most self taught programmers will have gotten their knowledge from experimentation, books, Google searches, and sites like this one. In general, they aren't going to be able to grab academic research from the 60s in optimizing graphs and apply that to their code when needed as the type of language and math involved is going to push them away. Meanwhile, a CS grad has probably had to go through these types of papers for their degree and will understand how to approach them. The confidence of doing it before in their degree is also incredibly important when reading something that looks like Greek. EDIT: And don't knock the knowledge you can gain from a paper written by some professor back in the 60s - the concepts, algorithms and recommendations are nearly always just as valid today.