alt Hacker NewsFor a motivated learner with access to good materials, schools provide two important things besides that very important piece of paper:
1. contacts - these come in the form of peers who are interested in the same things and in the form of experts in their fields of study. Talking to these people and developing relationships will help you learn faster, and teach you how to have professional collegial relationships. These people can open doors for you long after graduation.
2. facilities - ever want to play with an electron microscope or work with dangerous chemicals safely? Different schools have different facilities available for students in different fields. If you want to study nuclear physics, you might want to go to a school with a research reactor; it's not a good idea to build your own.
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But you can also meet experts at a company and get access to a company's machinery. To top it off the company pays you instead of you paying the school.
To extend 2. facilities, my experience had a - somewhat older and smaller - supercomputer that we got to run some stuff on.
And I'd argue for:
3. Realisation of the scope of computing.
IE Computers are not just phones/laptop/desktop/server with networking - all hail the wonders of the web... There are embedded devices, robots, supercomputers. (Recent articles on HN describe the computing power in a disposable vape!)
There are issues at all levels with all of these with algorithms, design, fabrication, security, energy, societal influence, etc etc - what tradeoffs to make where. (Why is there computing power in a disposable vape?!?)
I went in thinking I knew 20% and I would learn the other 80% of IT. I came out knowing 5 times as much but realising I knew a much smaller percentage of IT... It was both enabling and humbling.