Maybe I'm wrong - and I kind of hope I am, as there's a noble motive behind this movement - but I always feel that people are focusing too much on IT and the stories of a guy who became a full-blown IT professional learning by himself, Google and open courseware.

I think this kind of approach to learning works for IT, because a) the logistics to learn it are easier to handle; but mostly because b) most IT jobs actually don't require a degree - or "degree-deserving" knowlege; most programming is "trade-school"-like knowledge.