A follow up to that is to ask whether accreditations mean anything at all at this point. A high school diploma from a public school is known to be not worth anything presently as it doesn't even certify if the recipient is literate or knows basic math. Employers and colleges know better to rely on a high school diploma as evidence of anything, this is why they still have to test for skill level.
Are college degrees worth anything either? That is uncertain. Few employers validate whether someone really has the degrees they claim. Tech shops don't accept a bachelors in lieu of a programming test during an interview. Whether one has a degree is considered quite irrelevant since it is known that there are developers with no certifications or diplomas whose talent and skill surpass that of Computer Science diplomates from the finest institutions.
Why even bother with credentials with they don't really indicate anything useful.
I have been hearing impaired since birth, and I wear hearing aids. However, I 'evolved' to lip-read and read body language. School was invaluable to me, for making friends, figuring out how to deal with jerks and asking lecturers and tutors the right questions.
Not until I was in my 4th year at uni that I realised something was _very_ wrong - how did I know what to ask, if I didn't realise I'd missed it? :-)
These days, I am in a programming job, however I quite often hear something and go, "what the hell was that". However, with Khans offering captions for everything I pick up such tiny details that suddenly blow my mind and I feel very humbled. It feels like I'm learning backwards.
I hope that in the future, people don't rely on online classrooms, because then they will miss so much other things, that they simply won't realise until it's rather late.
"I have to... TALK to my colleagues?!"
if you have a startup looking for engineers, I would troll the reddit boards devoted to those classes and see who's interested in joining you
you might be able to come up with some pretty good underpriced talent
I think an alternative to the current model of getting yourself deep in debt to prove you're employable would do society alot of good
Then you would only have to be in school when you took whatever test was necessary to get that degree.
Although you could conceivably try directly for university and skip High School completely. Or even skip university, learn to code in your basement and be done with it.