The reason this trolling attempt worked so well is that both sides of this argument have merit. At 17, I dropped out, started working labeling tapes at a production house, and now at 32, I have the equivalent of a number of degrees in media and am very employed and respected in my field. Note- my field is media (production, editing, animation, design, dedicated systems, networking, etc, etc). In MOST fields, you cannot get away with this and I consider myself extremely lucky that things worked out so well for me.

There are still many fields out there which benefit greatly from a college education, and in many ways the act of surviving college itself is a qualification, much like being in the military. There is also an obvious benefit to the formal education in that certain things are taught in a specific order. When you are entirely self-taught, you often learn things somewhat out-of-sync.

So both sides can be accurate and anyone can succeed if they apply themselves hard enough. I'll never knock anyone for going to college, and I'll never knock anyone for choosing not to also.

Of course...just my opinion, don't go to college for computer-related work. It's too simple to learn on your own, why rack up that debt for a field that has virtually no positions available?