A college degree is important to many kinds of places, such as government contractors who are obligated to have all of their engineers with degrees. Generally

A college degree is important to many kinds of places, such as government contractors who are obligated to have all of their engineers with degrees. Generally the bigger an employer is, the more likely you're going to need a degree. If you want to write software for Lockheed or McDonnel Douglas you need a degree. In the context of software development, the most important thing you can get from a degree that you won't get from independent learning is the people connections. If you're wanting to start your own business and you've been living in a social cave for the last 5 years, you're at a significant disadvantage compared to someone who has spent the last several years rubbing elbows with the best brightest and best-connected people at Stanford. On the other hand, you're going to spend years studying things that may or may not seem relevant to you, when you could be learning and building things of direct impact this month. Most employers worth working for today want to see that you can do the job effectively, and you can demonstrate that with a killer portfolio and excellent interviewing skills. I went straight into the software industry out of high school. Well, technically before-- I got my first programming job at 16. I've never had trouble finding employment except for a brief period at the end of the dot com collapse in 2001. But not having a degree has always limited my options. Almost all jobs 20 years ago stated they require a degree, and they meant it. Today it's a small minority of jobs that state that they require a degree and actually mean it. The importance of a degree on paper is waning, and has been for some time. But the importance of knowing a bunch of people who know how to do lots of things, and have capitial: that is still vitally important. And a good university is a great way for a young person to get access to those things, but not the only way.