"One of the important ways we make use of donations is in awarding scholarships to highly skilled students. Each $5 you donate contributes to approximately one hour of work by a talented graduate student" from the dlang website.

I think it's good that scholarships are awarded, some money goes to graduate students doing work (even if I think the amount per hour is low), etc.

But I can't square your implications that this type of education is equivalent to self-taught when your own foundation seems to put an emphasis on it. Or is it just marketing for an audience that might believe that they're not equivalent?

Why is there this focus on people from formal education backgrounds or supporting people through scholarships to get a formal education when describing what a donation would go to?

I want to re-iterate. It's not that I believe you can just go sit in a class without focusing and acquire an education. I also don't believe that someone can't learn outside of a formal setting or even that they can't get superior results!

But, it seems to me that there's definitely some sort of difference between equally motivated people in a formal setting and in a self taught setting. And it seems to me that even the dlang foundation acknowledges that implicitly. Obviously there are lots of free resources provided by the foundation as well, so I can't argue there's a strong preference. But, if they were equivalent the foundation could just support one of them. And if a choice was to be made wouldn't the freely available resources be a more efficient allocation of donations?