YMMV, but with my college education I've been able to work on critical upgrades for our networking infrastructure, write a code-generation tool which automated

YMMV, but with my college education I've been able to work on critical upgrades for our networking infrastructure, write a code-generation tool which automated a substantial library migration, and diagnose/solve difficult bugs which come up late in the release cycle or in production. I take on tasks/projects which would usually require multiple offshore developers. Additionally, I spend nontrivial amounts of time fixing issues in our development environments that are caused by our offshore team. I end up taking on responsibility that no one else can, or perhaps wants to. On average, college graduates require a greater ramp up, but also have a more solid foundation and higher skill/impact ceiling. Before landing at my current job, I was passed on by lots of tech companies because I was good at theory and bad at interviewing/coding.