Comment by bornfreddy

> In the IT world it's entirely possibly to learn everything yourself and learn it better than one-fits-all course ever could.

Strong disagree. However, this is closer to truth:

In the IT world, if you have learned everything yourself, it's entirely possible to think you have learned it better than one-fits-all course ever could.

There is lots of theoretical knowledge that comes with the degree that, while mostly useless in day-to-day work, is priceless in those rare moments that it comes handy. A self-taught developer won't even know they are missing this knowledge. Example of this is knowing how compilers work (which is surprisingly useful) - without the theoretical background one might attempt to parse HTML with regex and expect correct results.

Not that all degrees are created equal. But those X years do give you an edge over self-taught developers. You still need to work on other skills too, of course.