My question: how does a piece of paper that thousands of others hold distinguish you? It doesn't. Take those four years and $120k-$240k you would spend on an "education" and get a real education - build a company. Building a legit company (successful or not) is worth 1000 times what that piece of paper is. Your mind will be tempered in the fires of reality.
As I've said many times, a degree is just your ticket to being some else's bitch.
How many financial institutions are going to lend $120-140k to an 18 year old for any purpose other than going to college?
It's also worth bearing in mind that spending 3-4 years focused on learning stuff like math,econ and CS rigorously can help your abilities to build a business later.
You might be able to setup your web dev shop at 18 and make a nice living for a few years making CRUD apps or whatever but once the market starts to demand something else then you are likely to get stuck if you haven't put some study into higher level principles.
Besides there is nothing stopping you from running a simple business at the same time as going to college. Myself and a few others on my CS course used to build websites and fix PCs during the holidays and made more money for about half the hours as the people working at the supermarkets and pubs.
A good portion of students receive little or no financial aid. Even if you do get that money loaned, its still debt on your head that you would have to save up for / pay off.
A common mistake people make is that any given subject (math, econ, etc) is limited to your studies in college. I have studied biology, architecture, the classics, geology, meteorology, botany, and much more outside of college.
It does depend whether or not you are a self learner, but is paying 120k+ really worth it to have someone twist your arm? Everything you can learn in college, you can learn outside, for free -- the interent has democratized information.
That depends on what you want to do with your life, doesn't it? Obviously, running a company should teach you how to run a company. It won't teach you how to be a chemist, or an electrical engineer, or a teacher, or a composer, etc.
My brother studied electrical engineering (because the CS department was full). He now uses his degree as a paperweight and develops software, which he taught himself. There is a good chance what you learn in college won't benefit you much in real life.
That aside, you can learn anything you want outside of college, for free. Information is free, thanks to the internet.
Not having a degree is like not dressing well for an interview. It's superficial, but people are judged for it. Largely because there are more, percentage-wise, unqualified people without degrees than with degrees.
A person may decide that it's not worth investing 4 years and lots of money for the sake of a degree, but a degree has advantages that should not be ignored.
I look through a lot of resumes for software engineers. I do not check for degrees -- I only look at their experience. I sense that this will become the norm as time goes on, but who knows. If some of the most successful people in the world are college dropouts, I figure a degree probably does not mean a whole lot.
I'm mostly speaking from personal (and vicarious) experience - when I graduated from college, I put out around 100 job applications -- no response. Then I released my first project, and had employers coming to me (Electronic Arts and Pixar, to name two). Make your own destiny -- all a degree gives you is an unwarranted sense of entitlement.
As I've said many times, a degree is just your ticket to being some else's bitch.