I would like to defend Silicon Valley a bit. More and more education is out current needs. And it will never catch up, as a huge system, with many constrains,

I would like to defend Silicon Valley a bit. More and more education is out current needs. And it will never catch up, as a huge system, with many constrains, large inertia etc. A programme which was perfect (say) 30 years ago may be not longer up to date - when jobs and technologies change rapidly. Additionally, now almost everything programming-related is on the Internet. See http://xkcd.com/519/ http://xkcd.com/519/ for a comment on usefulness of formal education. Sure, when someone's dream is to become "the next Gates/Jobs/Zuckerberg" it's not the right motivation to quit education. But I know a lot of smart people who dropped out because of their IT work, or company - and their motivation is not unlike one's who finished their degrees.