Caveat: my experience is from the UK (where university is usually focused on a single subject). No, you don't need a degree to work in IT (for almost all areas

Caveat: my experience is from the UK (where university is usually focused on a single subject). No, you don't need a degree to work in IT (for almost all areas). I know plenty of people who failed their degrees who are good programmers. But, degrees are pretty good if you want to pursue a subject in some depth, or if you are interested in academia in general. You get to hang out with a lot of intelligent people of your age who are into what you're into. You get to talk to some people who are (academic) experts in their field. You get to find out a lot of things that you might never have considered that people would put thought into. Degrees do make it easier to get a foot in the door of some of the more interesting areas of computer science (machine learning etc.).