Lurking forums and irc is probably a terrible way to train a hacker than a dedicated program that introduces you to the tools you'd be using on the job right away. Even today people don't even like hiring self taught engineers anymore like 20 years ago, when there are many more people today who have gone through legitimate education programs.

The one hacker I met in my life went to West Point and had no experience they didn't gain from being placed in their program after graduating with decent test scores.