> Thus the people who follow your advice will mostly stay in the "cheap" pool - I wouldn't consider this to be desirable.

Cheap... but employed. Expertise is only valuable if its valued. That means you not only need to be an expert in the thing, but also the market for the thing, and that's a lot to ask.

You can move between groups. If your expertise turns out not needed get a cheap job while learning something else.

The only way to develop deep expertise is to do it as your job.

There exist in my opinion rather few jobs where you will develop a deep expertise in some area.

I got my job/career precisely because I developed deep expertise on my own time. So no, that is not the only way to develop that expertise.

For most people, if your expertise isn't guided by boards of already experienced people then it's probably not really worth it. Most people are shockingly bad at learning on their own. They're gonna go home and watch TV, go to the gym, and spend time with their loved ones.

Look, I would not want a doctor to perform my surgery who did not do a residency. I don't care if they carved up 1,000 cadavers in their free time. I want somebody where the board of their specialty has said "yup, this guys good". I'm not gonna spend the time to try to trust the doctor, because that's really really hard. I'm not a doctor, I don't know shit. I have to rely on institutions of trust to do that work for me.

And that's really what universities are at their core - institutions of trust. When you get a degree, there's trust you understand the material to an appropriate degree. When you pass a residency, there's trust you understand the material to an appropriate degree. If we lose that trust, such as by letting students cheat by AI, that is a big problem.

Could I hire someone who says they're an expert, with no degree, and just give them a leetcode problem? Sure. But if I hire someone with a degree, I have a much greater level of certainty they can actually code. Same goes for work experience.

Why depend on a degree or a leetcode problem when neither is a good proxy for ability to code? Ask to see code that they've made public somewhere, Offer a take home exercise, Hire them on contract to hire.

There are so many better options than leetcode or degree.

I guess it depends on what you consider deep expertise- I assumed a 10000 hours/PhD level of expertise, which would be hard to achieve in a couple years while working.