I agree with you, it's not about the degree itself or the certification. It's about the education, and the confidence it gives you knowing that you've completed

I agree with you, it's not about the degree itself or the certification. It's about the education, and the confidence it gives you knowing that you've completed certain coursework that others in the field think is important. As a scaled-back example, I worked through the Stanford iPhone Programming course. It was great, even without videos of the lectures or being able to ask questions. The slides and exercises provided context, structure, introduced material appropriately, etc. Much better than what I'd been able to piece together through tutorials and sample code from Apple. In the end, it was nice to know that I had the same basis that the Stanford students had when they worked on their class projects. Those projects got written up on Techcrunch, too. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/22/stanford-students-release-a-cool-batch-of-iphone-apps/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/22/stanford-students-relea...