You can argue about the value of traditional education.
But I think you would be hard pressed to find a university, even a crappy one, where it's up to the students to TA themselves, there are 100 students to one professor, and the curriculum constantly changes in the middle of a semester. So it's not quite accurate to try and compare Lambda to a traditional univeristy.
But congrats on your success in career changing. It begs the question of whether you could've done that on your own without attending a boot camp.
I don't think I could have done it without a camp. I think that initial push to get "over the hump", at least the first hump for me really required someone I could immediately bounce questions off of, the structure of a classroom environment, and push to keep going because, class goes on.
Granted after that... I was fine learning on my own / that's half the job of programming. But initially I don't think I would have made it over that first hill.
I do think that is a personal learning style thing. When I was younger I was a TERRIBLE formal schooling type learner. When I went back I was appreciative / loved that environment.
I don't really think the primary value of a bootcamp is teaching you anything you couldn't learn on your own, but that it pushes you into a structured environment with other like-minded people to interact with and mentorship from experienced developers.
But I think you would be hard pressed to find a university, even a crappy one, where it's up to the students to TA themselves, there are 100 students to one professor, and the curriculum constantly changes in the middle of a semester. So it's not quite accurate to try and compare Lambda to a traditional univeristy.
But congrats on your success in career changing. It begs the question of whether you could've done that on your own without attending a boot camp.