[vinceguidry]

I had the ability to pick up new skills myself when I was that age. I taught myself how to program at 10. I was making websites at 15-16. I didn't need school to teach me how to learn. But that's not all school offers. Without a degree, you either have to figure out how to demonstrate your worth as an employee to someone by yourself bypassing all the usual social signalling, or you have to figure out how to be an entrepreneur, again without the benefit of the institutions we already have that evolved to fix this very problem.

Evolution doesn't create perfect solutions to problems, college is by no means perfect, but they do create effective ones, whereas designed solutions often aren't effective because they didn't take into advantage some important premise or edge case. Take this into account when you design the path you're going to take through your early twenties.