I didn't go to college, and am gainfully employed as a UI/UX designer and full-stack developer. I've heard mixed reviews on whether college gives you enough "r

I didn't go to college, and am gainfully employed as a UI/UX designer and full-stack developer. I've heard mixed reviews on whether college gives you enough "real world" value. From what I gather, it sounds like in college you'll learn more traditional "computer science" stuff, which is great if that's not your background. You'll learn classical patterns, some stuff about how to construct algorithms, memory management, big O time complexity, data structures, etc. I had the benefit of learning most of that in high school (they offered C and C++ courses and I had a wonderful teacher), and filled in the gaps by teaching myself (most of that can be learned in a few days if you have access to the internet). There's a lot of practical knowledge that you'll need if you want to do web development somewhere that requires you to be good at your job. Things like source control (I've never heard of a university that teaches Git), quoting/estimating tasks (something that can only be learned with experience, no way around it), balancing business/tech needs, tooling/workflow optimization, how to choose an appropriate technology stack, and anything on the front-end more advanced than basic CSS, just for starters. In short, college will NOT prepare you for the web industry. Expect to spend at least a year getting up to the level where you can have a development-oriented conversation with a real web developer. I can't speak to the rest of the industry, since my experience is pretty exclusive to the web. It sounds like you're doing well just learning on your own, and thankfully we work in an industry where universities can't hoard all the knowledge: anything they can teach you can be found online. They just offer a structured environment in which to consume that knowledge, for those that need some extra hand-holding (probably because the high school education system is an absolute travesty, but that's a rant for another day). One caveat: if your schooling is paid for (scholarship, parents, etc) then by all means take full advantage of the free ride. I was lucky enough to have a fiance that supported me while I spent about 6 months learning everything I needed to gain employment at a web development agency (and now I support her with that job while she's going to cosmetology school); I can't imagine how hard it would have been to learn all that while having to worry about bills. So, blow off your classes as much as you can without getting kicked out, learn everything you can about real web development, and once you have a job lined up, decide whether you really want to jump ship. Maybe start with contracting or part-time work at a dev shop somewhere.