For anyone considering an education in computation,
There's a few routes you can follow.
1a. Teach yourself how to program, work on projects that you upload to git-hub, network with other people, slowly build up a portfolio you can show to employers, and try to get some entry level certifications from a tech school. Good ideas for some simple projects: make mobile apps using Swift for iOS devices, and C++ or android for android devices. Design a simple game using Unity or Unreal. Keep it 2D for your first project as there are shitloads of free sprite libraries online, but 3D assets are clunky and harder to design for.
1b. Teach yourself how to administrate systems like windows, macOS, and linux. Learn how Active Directory works and how to configure/manage VMware virtual machines. Learn how to set up and manage cloud-based services. Get certs like CompTIA A+/Network+, and Cisco Certified Router/Switch, and Linux+ so you can get hired as an entry-level network technician.
2a. Go to college. Get your BS degree in Computer Engineering if you want a broad education in computers that teaches you the hardware side of things as well as the software side. Get a job doing pretty much anything, but note that you'll probably need to learn more on your own if you want to do programming/web dev.
2b. Go to college. Get your BS degree in Computer Science if you want an education that is basically a sub-field of applied mathematics. CS focuses on designing and implementing algorithms, which is the bread-and-butter of all programming languages. Now-a-days this is such a cookie-cutter degree path that with a GPA above 3.0 you're almost guaranteed an internship in your third year, and many big companies will just hire you into a salary position after that if you do a good job. Note that starting pay is way less than the averages you see everywhere, because hundreds of thousands of H1B visas are handed out every year in America to outsource entry-level programming jobs, which means you've got to do a little hill-climbing before you can get into the good jobs (4~5 years of work experience to qualify for a "junior" position). But there's still lots of work available and this is still one of the best degrees you can get.
2c. Go to college. Get your BS in either CompSci or CompEng, and minor in biology, because bio-tech is the future and there is simply so much shit to do in the bio-tech industry that pays respectably.
3. Go to a 2-year tech school. Get certs and training in whatever job skills you want - cybersecurity, entry-level technician, web-dev, systems programmer, net/web/sys admin, you name it. This is probably the best route if you don't care about getting a college education or doing graduate studies and just want good job right now so you can start building work-experience and a resume as quickly as possible.
Optional (personal bias incoming): Do graduate work and get a masters in CompSci or CompEng with your concentration in machine learning/artificial intelligence. If algorithms are the basis of all machine instructions, and the purpose of machines is to automate labor, then put it all together and you get artificial intelligence. AI has come a long way since the old days almost a century ago, and right now there are some really amazing things happening in this field that anyone with strong math skills and a creative mind (you need to be able to conceptualize the learning process related to learning something as an optimized algorithm) can get in on. ML/AI is more accessible now than ever before. In fact, with a basic understanding of Python and the TenserFlow library (and a firm grasp of differential calculus/linear algebra) you can start building your own basic neural networks for free.
My educational goal right now is to get my masters in CompSci so I can apply for work as an AI specialist. Ideally, I'd love to work alongside cybernetics experts for a bio-tech firm, or pretty much anything related to bio-tech right now because there are a huge number of jobs for machine learning experts.
