At least in the short term an Udacity education is going to be considered the same as self-taught. A traditional education however is going to open up other opportunities that the self-taught cannot easily obtain. As long as Udacity is free however, there's no reason to not pack in some extra classes if he has the time.
I have a traditional education, BS in CS & EE, and it seems to me that it never has been relevant in my professional life. I'm not talking about what I learned in college, that part has been useful. I'm talking about the certification aspect. I finished college 29 years ago, and in all that time I've never had the issue of showing some kind of certificate come up when being offered a job. Maybe I'm an exception and I'm underestimating the certification aspect, but what I'm more concerned about right now is that he wouldn't experience meeting many different kinds of people if he stays at home to study instead of going to some campus, and that doesn't feel right to me.
I'm also concerned about how complete is the curriculum at Udacity going to be. I'm sure all the CS classes are going to be pretty good, but what about other subjects like math & physics? I wonder what they are going to do about that and who's going to teach them.
As someone who moved to the US for work, one important benefit of 'the certification aspect' is that it'll open up travel opportunities he'd otherwise struggle with: most work visas require a degree, sometimes 'or equivalent experience' but that's harder to demonstrate. If he actually wants to immigrate somewhere the degree may also provide points for that.
I'm talking about the certification aspect. I finished college 29 years ago, and in all that time I've never had the issue of showing some kind of certificate come up when being offered a job.
Doesn't this proof of certification happen the moment Human Resources asks for a resume?
I got my first job when I went to a company that sold Atari computers to buy from them an Editor/Assembler cartridge for the Atari 800. They were also selling Altos business computers and they wanted someone to help them with sales, they thought that if I wanted to buy that cartridge then I did know about microcomputers and microprocessors. I wasn't really interested in business computers or selling them but they did have lots of Atari software I could play with, I thought that could be fun so I took the job.
Their main focus was to sell 8 bit Altos computers running M/PM, a multiuser version of C/PM. I really didn't care much about those computers, but a few months later Altos introduced the Altos 586, a 16 bit computer running Xenix. I had bought a copy of the "C Programming Language" a couple of years before and that was the first time I could get my hands on a machine with a C compiler. From then on I spent all my time playing with that computer, 7 days a week, writing C programs and learning all I could about Unix. The Altos 586 turned out to be a very popular computer, we sold many of those, and I became well known in the local computer industry as the Unix & C guru. From then on, people who have offered me a job have always been people who know me and know what I can do, so the certification has never been and issue.
At least in the short term an Udacity education is going to be considered the same as self-taught. A traditional education however is going to open up other opportunities that the self-taught cannot easily obtain. As long as Udacity is free however, there's no reason to not pack in some extra classes if he has the time.