There is so much information and knowledge available to you now. Why bother investing the money into an expensive school when free courses are available? Because for some people, the degree carries weight.

Paper money is valuable because you and the people you exchange paper money with agree that it’s valuable. However, if I give you $5 USD bill and you don’t live in the US, you may not agree that the bill carries the same value. Perhaps a 5 EU note would be better? Degrees are the same.

Degrees are valuable to those who believe the degree matters. Those people are aging out of the system. What is starting to matter is your portfolio - what you produced.

I think I still support the route of learning all you can and producing work to show. I am much more impressed by the person who made something that uses multiple skills they taught themselves than the person who has a student-like framework about the world.