[xyience]

#5 and #7 are great, I too don't like the anti-intellectualism a lot of degree seekers seem to have. But the typical tuition these days is a large price to pay for intellectualism. I paid a high price for my CE degree, which I entered into in large amount for the intellectual curiosity of understanding hardware, knowing full well I'd probably end up in some web dev software engineering job afterwards (that pays better anyway) since I already had prior experience with that, and in any case as long as I had some job in the tech industry I'd be making enough that student debt wouldn't cripple me.

I would only encourage people to make the choice based on a sober calculation of expected costs (including opportunity costs) and gains rather than because "it's the thing to do". Before I went to my school of choice I planned out the course sequence for my entire time there -- of course it ended up being different but not hugely so. Unexpected things will come up (#1 and #2 should have been learned by high school, what I didn't expect was that for me continuing the related path of "shut up and get BS work done" through college would result in burning out my tolerance for BS work in general and it's taken a long time to build that back up enough that I can perform ok in enterprisey roles) but that in itself is a useful thing to learn. If past me had future me as a mentor, I'd encourage past me to skip school and satiate his curiosity more directly, but not everyone has access to a mentor.