In theory, yes. The student would have to be highly self motivated, but this is actually how I learned to program, until I started joining open source projects. It's cost effective, and in my experience, the majority of engineering jobs (especially in startups) that such a student would apply for care more about your ability to code than your degree. A recent topic here actually showed that most programmers applying for a job can't do all but the simplest of programming tasks in languages they list on their resumés. There are fields where a degree is essential, like medical fields with a lot of hands on work. But the beauty of programming fields is that you can learn from the machine that is principally used in programming: the computer.
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In theory, yes. The student would have to be highly self motivated, but this is actually how I learned to program, until I started joining open source projects. It's cost effective, and in my experience, the majority of engineering jobs (especially in startups) that such a student would apply for care more about your ability to code than your degree. A recent topic here actually showed that most programmers applying for a job can't do all but the simplest of programming tasks in languages they list on their resumés. There are fields where a degree is essential, like medical fields with a lot of hands on work. But the beauty of programming fields is that you can learn from the machine that is principally used in programming: the computer.