Speaking as the only person in my office who was a degree in CS (one has a geology degree, the other dropped out half-way through his graphic design degree, both make more than I do), no, you don't need a degree to get a job as a software engineer. The job I had previously wasn't altogether different, either. I think less than half of us had degrees in CS.

At least that leaves me with a spark of hope, but it's still quite discouraging that you could be the best programmer in your entire school, and still not be admitted for a CS degree. It kinda defeats the whole point of school, degree, job.

If schools judged CS applicants by their ability to program, I'd agree, but they don't. They judge them based upon their likelihood to succeed in the program (amongst other things, like building a diverse student body or whatever). That is, they judge them by their ability to be a good student. If all of the evidence goes to show that a prospect is a terrible student, why would a University accept them knowing that they are likely to fail?

Now, your friends may be more than capable at succeeding in university, and if a school only took the time to get to know them, they might see that, but, on paper, they look the same as someone who likely couldn't succeed in school (because they haven't, really, up to that point).

That all sounds all horrible about universities, disregarding these capable students because of an inability to really get to know prospects, but that's not on them. If you want to get into a good school, try harder.

As far as it defeating the point of getting an education, I'd wholly agree that college is not a worthwhile pursuit for a future-SE if your only reason for going is to get a job. You'll spend a lot of time in college learning skills that are not directly applicable to your future employment. You could arguably get to a point where you're good enough to hire more efficiently by skipping school. Whether or not it's worth passing on the things you really won't experience outside of school in exchange for a more efficient route to money is really up to you.

When I'm interviewing developers, I don't care about degrees. I don't even look at schooling on resumes. You might need it for the recruiters, but not for the actual job.

Can you code and are you at the level we need for the position? There are too many programmers that can't pass FizzBuzz but have CS degrees.

> Or hack whatever is broken with the educational systems around the world.

Our educational systems are broken yes, but what is even more broken are our memories.

I think that dramatically enhancing human memory is possible, and I think it's critically important.