I'm surprised by the cynicism in the comments. HS graduates need as many alternatives to college as possible. Not everyone is going to want to be a construction worker or factory worker as the only alternative. IT and CS are also vocational, in that one cannot show up to a job site and start working right away. When I graduated in 2002, no one in my high school ever recommended anything technology related, it was just assumed going on to college was good enough.

Today, my own alma mater's career center can only help me with updating my resume. Big deal, and giant yawn. Why can't my college recommend me for jobs with employers who take their grads? Where is the social network I tapped into? What is it good for? Now that college is shedding jobs and panicking over Covid. What happens if the college fails? I'm still on the hook for every dollar I borrowed.

Also, I should mention, college is marketed as job preparation. Look at any college website and see how they pitch students to come there (bs things like 99% of our grads are employed in their field of choice. oh yeah? 99%?). I also disagree that college teaches "critical thinking". We all know that's a vapid load of crock.

Anyway, the Google certs, and Microsoft certs, etc, are all good things for people who have a degree but that degree turned out to be a mistake. For myself, I am self-learning CS because my teaching degree is no longer valid, and I welcome cheap certification courses as some kind of proof of competence.