Please allow me share my personal experience and as to why I don't consider a "formal education" to be anything special or unique or magical (including my own). For the record, my degrees are in engineering, and not in CS.
I would describe the majority of the classes (not course topics) I sat in during my time as completely worthless and a waste of my time. There was a very typical pattern from undergraduate courses all the way to graduate courses: professor would come in, dribble a bit on the board and often copy verbatim from a book onto the board, mumble a bit, and erase the board move on the the next topic and then leave. I'd then have to go read the book and pick up 1 or 2 reference books to try and understand what was going on. Maybe I had a total of 2-3 courses that I felt I actually gained something worthwhile by sitting in the _classes_. So almost all of the time I was "self-teaching" despite having a "teacher" and getting a "formal" education. And now, 4 years later, I'm continuing to self-teach by picking up books and reading through them on my own.
Having said all that, unfortunately I would have never gotten my current job had I not put down that I have an "X in Y" on my resume/CV -- not because it's required for the job, no, _not at all_, but because it just helped them check off one of those "requirements" off their list.
I would describe the majority of the classes (not course topics) I sat in during my time as completely worthless and a waste of my time. There was a very typical pattern from undergraduate courses all the way to graduate courses: professor would come in, dribble a bit on the board and often copy verbatim from a book onto the board, mumble a bit, and erase the board move on the the next topic and then leave. I'd then have to go read the book and pick up 1 or 2 reference books to try and understand what was going on. Maybe I had a total of 2-3 courses that I felt I actually gained something worthwhile by sitting in the _classes_. So almost all of the time I was "self-teaching" despite having a "teacher" and getting a "formal" education. And now, 4 years later, I'm continuing to self-teach by picking up books and reading through them on my own.
Having said all that, unfortunately I would have never gotten my current job had I not put down that I have an "X in Y" on my resume/CV -- not because it's required for the job, no, _not at all_, but because it just helped them check off one of those "requirements" off their list.