I don't get it. The self study is the easiest part. Nothing prevents you from starting to learn these things from age 12 and up. Not even the language barrier is an important consideration. The harder part is actually getting recognized by employers when you can't just supply them with a paper that shows them that you burned X amount of years on a certain topic which employers use as a form of spam prevention like the proof of work mechanism in bitcoin. So not only do you need to study as hard as a university student but after self study you will still have to work hard to get past the HR filters.