I honestly couldn’t tell you, because I don’t know.
If I had to guess, then I might consider:
- MOOCs are easily available online, but they are not terribly useful as credentials. Certificates, even those that require some non-trivial registration fees, are not considered even remotely close to a real degree. Credibility is the key challenge. However, they can be quite useful as resources for those who are interested, and motivated to learn.
- There are likely (at least) two key challenges facing a self-taught CS engineer.
- motivation/drive. It’s incredibly hard to force yourself to keep learning and to do the hard work to get really good at something, especially when there’s no build in incentive or external pressure. This is why tuition and similar expenses are helpful, because you’re much more likely to commit once you’ve paid the $. Guilt is a powerful motivator. But without that, even the most self-driven students will find it hard to match the results they would get from a real class with real deadlines and pressures (peer- and course-based).
- credibility. How do you prove that you’re legit, that you actually learned from the self-study, and that your skill level is similar to someone else with accredited credentials? You need some alternative common metric that is easily understood by hiring managers.