What does a degree matter when you're The Boss:

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-31356080

Looking for your dream job in Berkely, CA building UAVs:

http://3drobotics.com/careers-2/

 

<<do on the academic ladder unless you're fortunately rich>>

This can fool the university assessment.
If you choose someone rich, that even if it is stupid and will not learn anything at school,
will be successful in life because it is rich!

Thus the university says:
A large number of graduates of our university working in well-paid places !

<<Do you ever contemplate if the degree you chose was right for you?>>

Many times.
When the world was using Java, we learn Fortran, because this one professor knew.
And I told the teacher that.

 

Fortran was around long before java. October 1956 there was a version of FORmula TRANslator.

 

<<Do you ever contemplate if the degree you chose was right for you?>>

Many times.
When the world was using Java, we learn Fortran, because this one professor knew.
And I told the teacher that.

Then perhaps you should have dropped out of school right then and started your own school since you clearly knew what needed to be taught and what didn't.

This was almost certainly an introductory course and, at that level, it really doesn't matter what language is used. Quite arguably, a language like Fortran, BASIC, or C is a better language to learn the fundamentals on because you get to see the fundamentals in action. Languages like Java, Python, and C# hide too much from you (for good reasons when you are writing programs to do things) for you to really gain an understanding of what programming really entails.

I learned BASIC in high school but learned it from a teacher that emphasized programming concepts. As a result, I was able to test out of Fortran in college after less than a week even though I had never heard of the language. The concepts were the same, I just had to get a handle on the syntax.