I have a degree in computer engineering and I’ve worked for the largest chip manufacturer since I graduated in 2005. I have some regrets and I’ll pass them on in case you find them helpful. Bear in mind that my experiences are just anecdotal and not normative.
My first surprise was when I found out that there was a difference between a Computer Engineering degree and the “Computer Engineering Technology” degree I earned. Essentially CET means that I spent more time in the lab and less time in lectures (I didn’t really know this when I signed up, I was pretty naive). The lesson here: watch out for gimmicks of all kinds. Fortunately, my degree is a real 4-year bachelor’s engineering degree but employers searching for recent graduates treat it as a “less rigorous” degree, which I find rather ironic since the degree program I went through is brutal by comparison to similar programs at the other universities in the state - there is an 95% attrition rate… only 5% of freshmen who initially chose the CET major will graduate the program… that’s worse than the Navy Seals BUD/S school which manages to graduate 20% of entrants. But the fact is that nobody cares how hard you worked in school, they just care about the grade (bachelor’s, master’s, etc.) and the brand-name value of the school.
Student loans are a real nag that just keeps hanging on and on and on. It’s been 6 years since I graduated and I’ve got well over half of my original student loans still hanging around my neck. Of course, this is partly a result of other issues in my life (divorce) which have made me cash-poor for the last few years so I’m not in a position to shake the student loans once and for all. If you’re going to self-sponsor, you will never be able to pay your way through school, earning as you go. However, if you are disciplined, get all the Federal “grants” and take on only the bare minimum student loans and actuall work hard (full-time school + part-time or even full-time-off-hours job), you can get through with manageably sized student loans. You will also need to shop since many schools are way over-priced.
After working for a few years, I began to realize that the people higher up than me - in terms of engineering responsibilities - mostly walked in over my head. They started out at a higher position than I did when they walked right out of school. The recruitment is done in a manner very similar to how people shop for clothes: brand names. Michigan State is good, MIT is (of course) good, Cornell good, and so on. Graduates of these schools walk right into better jobs than graduates of other schools and the chasm separating the “lower” positions from the higher positions is inexplicably un-bridgeable. Hard work, long hours, dedication, smarts, technical depth and experience, all-round usefulness as an employee all add up to a pretty small weight versus the brand-value of a big-name university.
I’ve come to the rather cynical opinion that part of the purpose of the degree system - at least within the orbits of the large corporations - is to prove that your parents were rich, that is, that you deserve to have your position. Of course, this is insane from the point-of-view of a profit-driven corporation which you would think would be merciless in preferring the best talent regardless of “status”. However, I am also of the opinion that the whole idea of a corporation has more to do with making sure a business is not excessively profit-driven for the comfort of the powers that be. The most important reason is to ensure that businesses enforce the tax codes but I believe a side-benefit is to create cushy private-sector positions for the children of the already-wealthy to walk into. To put it too simply, the children of wealthy Democrats go to college, get a Masters and manage a government bureau… the children of wealthy Republicans also go to college, get a Masters degree but they walk into a position (probably management or some other kind of “lead” role) at a major corporation. There is definitely a synergy between the corporate world and the government.
However, despite all the games, at the end of the day, there has to be people who just get shit done. Surprisingly many of these people do come from the ranks of the entitled, but not all of them. So, whatever you may think of what I’m saying here, don’t get tempted to “play the game.” By “playing the game”, I mean racking yourself into debt to get a degree from Brown or Duke and pretend you were born into money… then white-washing your roots when you get into your career to pretend you’ve been high-brow all along. I see people do this and a few even succeed but most people just get chewed up and spit out.
The school system itself has become so twisted and perverted from centuries of subsidy and meddling by the State. 250 years ago in Europe, if I wanted to be an engineer, I would have to earn some sort of university diploma but that would just be to show my future master that I am a literate - my real education would begin the day I started work as an apprentice for a real engineer. As an apprentice, I would have made no money or, at best, a pittance - despite my fancy diploma! I believe the apprentice system is far superior to what we have today. Today - at least where I work - there is no concept of apprenticeship and engineering skills are “siloed”. Siloing occurs when information that would be useful to others is hidden in order to protect turf within the organization. Basically, information sharing does not occur at the company I work at. It’s only through a combination of luck, carefully chosen questions, strategically self-assigned reading and other jujutsu techniques that I’ve managed to learn what little I have in the six years I’ve been working.
You are apparently fascinated by robots. If that really is your true love, I would recommend that you go to some conferences (you will probably have to pay and it might be pretty spendy up-front) and just talk to some people in the industry. Take notes, take names, take business cards and email addresses and ask for additional contacts. Then, follow up with emails and phone contacts afterwards to scope out the terrain of the robotics industry. Who are the players, and I don’t mean names of corporations, I mean the names of the big-shot principal engineers with R&D budgets and the small-time startups with genuine niche markets. You can’t find this information on Google and probably can’t find it for free anywhere. Of course, you should start with any internet forums to bootstrap the process… how else will you find out which conference you should attend?
After doing your “recon” work, you will be in a better position to decide what sort of degree you’re going to need. The path of least resistance if you had rich parents would be to go to MIT and earn a Ph.D then start working for the R&D department of a major Japanese corporation that develops robot prototypes. I’m assuming you don’t have rich parents so you’ll have to use a lot more cunning. Your best bet is to go to a low-cost yet stolid college which has a reputation in either the mechanical or the digital electronics/AI side or both. Talk to the faculty and find out who hires their graduates. Don’t be impressed by the big-name corporations, you’ll be lucky to be a low-level engineer in one of those because all the “hot-shot” jobs were already given away to the Cornell, Brown and Duke graduates. Instead, find a school that hires into lots of smaller companies. This way, you’ll have more of a chance to really work on something you find interesting. This was another of my mistakes which I dearly regret… I got a (better!) offer from a smaller company and turned it down for a smaller offer from the big-name corporation because I felt it was more “stable.” The other company is still around, doing great business and I’m a nobody at my “stable” job. Derp.
Finally, when you get to your first job, try to find someone who is willing to apprentice you. Nowadays, people don’t think of it as apprenticing but that’s really what it is. What this means is that you purposely let yourself be taken advantage of… find someone who is senior and will use all your spare time on their pet projects in order to make themselves look good. This is what you want. Don’t try to stand out at first. This was my second mistake. I thought I was all that when I started. I still am. 
But I’m the only one who knows that and that’s because I didn’t do the needful and let myself be taken advantage of by a senior engineer. Don’t be full of ideas. Find out what their pet project is - however lame you know it really is - and do all the leg work for them. In the process, you will have ample opportunity to learn the senior engineer’s voodoo. I never got the chance to learn the black magic tips and tricks by osmosis. Instead, I was thrown in to sink or swim and I’ve had to teach myself to swim… a very painful process to do while you’re drowning. I’m still behind my peers who started at the same time I did and had the humility to put themselves under a senior engineer. That is how apprenticeship works in the modern, corporate world. It’s stupid because nobody just comes out and says what it is and I’m kind of dense that way, I pick up on those kinds of things slow-like. And now it’s kind of too late because I’m experienced. Anyway, milk your greenness, find a senior engineer, do his dirty work, make him feel smart and look good to his boss. You will learn far more that way.
Clayton -