Your post is pretty long so I may have missed it, but can you afford college? Does paying for a degree and getting mediocre grades work for you / whoever is pay

Your post is pretty long so I may have missed it, but can you afford college? Does paying for a degree and getting mediocre grades work for you / whoever is paying for it? If so I would say go ahead and stay there, take classes, pass, but also start shipping your own products (if you're not already). Like a lot of people I got a degree (not CS) at some bullshit private college because I felt I had to. I'm now on my second career (CS) and my second successful business and I can tell you that my degree has meant almost nothing to me. It's probably true that my first career (in marketing) wouldn't have taken off if I had to tell people I was a college dropout, but programming is pretty unique in that regard and in my experience many/most people just want to know if you can ship a quality product or not. Having said that, I've seen a lot of people who say they must to do their own thing really mean that they can't commit to whatever they're doing. I used to be like that. You say you're confident that you can build products that can make money. Have you done that? If not then get there first (while in college) and see how you feel. If you're really a startup person, you can manage both college and a product to prove yourself. I don't know how your CS department works, but having a product on the market might also open that door. If not, screw them and go your own way. Also, failure in business is not binary or permanent.