In my 20 plus years of software development I’ve determined that college education only accounts for maybe 20% of the required knowledge for my career field. Technologies are changing constantly and only those who have the aptitude and desire to keep up with those changes will survive in this field. I’ve met people with only a high school degree who were brilliant coders/developers and other people from MIT who couldn’t write the most simple of programs.
Software development is as much an art as it is a profession. Some “artists” are just better than others and have natural ability to visualize an entire application in their head. Having a holistic view before even starting makes applications less buggy, easier to understand and easier to enhance. Just as Da Vinci visualized his art works and inventions before he put it on paper.
... if that!
To me, a college degree shows me only two things:
I am not a degreed engineer, in fact I am a public high school graduate, my only formal education beyond that having been a 38 week electronics school in the Navy. I do however understand what you are saying. I have done a lot of projects which I constructed mentally and then recognized the flaw in my plan and reconstructed mentally before actually starting the physical project and without putting anything on paper. I did maintenance on small offset printing equipment for thirty or more years and I can still visualize one of those machines as if it is on a movie screen in front of me. I can start it up, see the parts move and even section it to see the internal parts and tell you which are moving clockwise and which counterclockwise. If I really concentrate I can “hear” it, not as clearly as I see it but I can still bring it back. Apparently most people are unable to do this. I used to do the “celebrity cryptogram” in the local newspaper and reached the point that in many cases I could look at it for a while and then read it off without ever picking up a pencil.
ANY human endeavor fits that criterion. EVERY science has an "art" factor, including the hardest of sciences, and every art has a technology basis. There is no such animal as the "Two Cultures" (attempting to separate science/technology from "art").
Most GOOD scientists and engineers in the past (and still today) are also capable in some or other art (how many top physicists, for instance, played some musical instrument or other, others have written novels, produced plays, etc., etc.). So the "science" part of the mythical "two cultures" has retained its connection to "the arts".
The same cannot be said for the "art" side....most of those these days are technologically illiterate..but in the past any painter had to formulate his own paints..which forced him to keep his hand in the technology side. Likewise for the other arts. BUT, the BEST artists today "still" have a tech connection, and utilize it to enhance their works.