While I agree that a young adult might learn more “out in the world” than at college, I’m not convinced that their job and financial prospects aren’t better if they go to college.
For every Gates, Dell, or Zuckerberg there are a thousand Vincent Chus. Never heard of Vincent Chu? Of course not. He and thousands of other “mavericks” dropped out of or never went to college, and never hit it big with an app or anything else. Now they work at The Gap to pay the bills, and they’re hoping to get into management some day.
When I was in high school (or college, I don’t remember – either way, it was at least 30 years ago) one of my teachers said that college wasn’t so much to learn things as to show prospective employers that you could do what it took to get into and then get through college (and, by extension, that you might have what it takes to do whatever job they were offering). Whether that’s a good measuring stick or not is certainly debatable. The point is that, whether you learn anything useful or not, a college degree does improve your marketability as a prospective employee.
A college degree is certainly not a golden ticket. In fact, it’s even less of a golden ticket than it was a decade or two ago. But it still (imho) offers the best chance of a decent-paying job.
