Your argument is absurd because you are making a lot of incorrect assumptions.
I don't spend all my time looking up stuff on google, I've learned the examples you've given and I don't write crappy code.
In my experience, I write better code than most CS majors I've worked with. It may be that in very few and far between instances, a CS major will have some knowledge that would have helped me, but it is definitely not a daily, weekly or even monthly occurrence.
How is my argument absurd? I fail to see how writing code with early exits and having a basic understanding of process memory space, which I've demonstrated on the basis of things people, that don't have CS degrees, have said and done at my work absurd?
What I don't get is why so many people stereotype college as useless because they think you're in a lecture hall scribbling down whatever the professor says and that's it. How such a notion came to be and how people seem to forget exercises, labs, and class projects is very much beyond me.
It depends on what kind of job you want, I suppose. If you want to work on the more esoteric aspects of technology (OS or Database development) then your CS degree will be more relevant than if you want to make end-user-facing applications. Application development in the industry is far more about the product than it is about the technology.
As far as your experience with your less educated coworkers, if you look around you will find bad programmers of all backgrounds. You will find great programmers of all backgrounds. It's a fair question to ask if college is worth the incredible cost.
Considering the fact that if you apply for scholarships, get good grades is high school and good ACT/SAT scores, and you can get funding from the government, college can be relatively inexpensive. I went to a private school with comparable tuition to MIT and I walked out with only around 50k in debt. If I went to a public university, it would have been much less. So, I have about as much debt as this company took to train a bunch of high schoolers.
Although I agree that college costs are high, they aren't insurmountable if you apply for scholarships, government funding (FASA), and you do well in school or sports.
I don't spend all my time looking up stuff on google, I've learned the examples you've given and I don't write crappy code.
In my experience, I write better code than most CS majors I've worked with. It may be that in very few and far between instances, a CS major will have some knowledge that would have helped me, but it is definitely not a daily, weekly or even monthly occurrence.