It depends on the individual. There are plenty of driven people who want to know the absolute most they can, and won't stop once they're able to generate appli

It depends on the individual. There are plenty of driven people who want to know the absolute most they can, and won't stop once they're able to generate applications. There are then plenty of others who get something to "work" and call it a day. But that's not restricted to self-learners. You can do the absolute minimum in college, too. Not to mention all of the things that you learn but don't apply after graduation, if you're taking specific classes and don't work directly in OS design or algorithms, that fades pretty quickly. More importantly, CS programs don't spend a ton of time on the programming itself, so to some degree you have to be a self-learner even at a college-level CS program.