It comes down always to what you offer the company. The diploma is close to nothing but a piece of paper. case in point (and I;ve told this story here a couple of time..)
My business partner has a tech co. here in West Hollywood, CA and previously fired an IT guy from an “well-known” tech university located in the East Coast.
The new 23-year old guy he hired demonstrated web techniques which were superior than the last one. One day he was in a burger joint with the dude and he asked him where did he learn XML, ASP, .NET and all that tech stuff.
His answer: “University of Youtube”.Apparently, all this techie stuff were being taught on educational videos on YT. He would also download via bitorrent the apps, borrow the book from the public library and learn it on his own.
And he got hired? Wow.
Excellent. Wish there were more employers out that like him.