Tried to get my oldest to go here. She reads super fast with high comprehension and loves to debate, but she's so terrified of going into debt that she's now in a state college taking computer science and saying Chat GPT is way more helpful than her professor for understanding or fixing code.
Yes, the cost is unfortunate. They do have grants and scholarships that can save a few thousand per semester, but that’s still not enough if you don’t have at least some college funds set aside.
If it's cheap enough, the paper's worth it just to never worry about having to explain your lacking a degree. Even if you rarely actually have to, it's always in the back of your mind. A potential question that you'll need to be ready to reframe positively, plus that constant worry that you're receiving extra scrutiny, just... go away completely.
It'll also be very handy if one ever wishes to leave the US—most countries one might want to live and work in will be much more likely to let you in with a degree, and especially a CS degree.
I went back and finished mine. Removing that stressor from interviews was worth it, even if that was basically the only benefit, which it was—nearly all the benefits I can point to from college came from the humanities degree I nearly finished, years before completing the CS degree. For the CS degree, perhaps two or three hours worth of instruction or material have proven either useful or edifying since. But, I'm glad to have the paper.
