[ahoyhere]

I think you're overstating the risk and need to be exceptional, actually. For the kinds of jobs we're talking about.

# of employers who asked why I didn't list any high school on my resume: 0. # of clients who asked where I went to school: 0. I may be exceptional now, but I wasn't always, and I still got good jobs.

I either put nothing about education at all on my resume, and explained that I left college because xyz, or jokingly put "The School of Hard Knocks" and that worked for me.

FWIW I have done everything from working for a local software dev co., to consulting for Pepsi, and I was employed as a consultant for Bear Stearns ("hired" by their staffing agency — it's a weird setup), with these (lack of) credentials. Never had a problem.