Went to Academy of Art University in SF. Dropped out in 2011. Got a job as a Graphic Designer but switched it up and became a Software Engineer this last year. Honestly LOVE design, but not worth it to go to school. Same with Computer Science... everything is online for both of those disciplines and I wish it were for other disciplines as well.
There was another post about what you would do differently if you could and it would be more creativity but with a scientific twist to it, I don't know... maybe science fiction? Maybe teaching. Maybe sailing like those kids 'la vagabonde'. So inspiring.
The way I see it, school is like Ruby on Rails while learning yourself is like PHP. The first one gives you the current best practices while the latter is open for you to explore and most likely mess up in the beginning, especially when it comes to architecture.
Having a solid computer science base is not impossible to achieve without a degree, but it is pretty easy to tell when a system has been architected by somebody with masters or PhD in computer science as opposed to a self taught guy.
Disclaimer: I'm a mix of both, but no PhD here. I had to work with some and they were amazing for architecture, probably not so much for the practical side of things of doing commercial software.
There was another post about what you would do differently if you could and it would be more creativity but with a scientific twist to it, I don't know... maybe science fiction? Maybe teaching. Maybe sailing like those kids 'la vagabonde'. So inspiring.