Thanks guys, that actually did change my opinion about it a great deal.

I don't hold the same opinion as before but I do still cling to parts of it. I guess I just feel that at times and in certain classes too much time was spent on menial things that could have been used better elsewhere. but of course nothing is going to be perfect so...

With that said, how do you find a job where you use all the theoretical stuff you learn? I've only worked 3 programming positions so my insight isn't very good at this point, esp with them being low level/intern positions. but from what I've seen even the higher ups were only writing code that was covered in the first 2 years of a program. Of course it was extremely larger code base and some complex nested loops etc, but nothing of the true theoretical side. If anyone has any other advanced topics that they learned, I'd love to hear about them, that was the original intent of the post, but I got sidetracked with complaining ha.

but thanks for the input! Also just a quick opinion, do you feel college is worth the cost? In other words, if degrees weren't job requirements, most of the time, would you have been able to learn as much on your own?

I suppose I was lucky to land the job I did, but I make extensive use of the theoretical stuff I learned while at university. My day usually consists of implementing either bayesian network algorithms, vision processing or integrating these backends with pretty GUIs :P

That being said, a few of my friends from varsity are doing database coding for larger firms and they put their database background to good use. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it depends on the type of company in question, but in most cases you will find uses for the theory that you learn while studying. That isn't to say, however, that you need to be taught by lecturers - I did most of my learning by myself at varsity.