What's often not said in these discussions is that college/university time is a great time to work out what you want to do for a bit. I certainly had no idea wh

What's often not said in these discussions is that college/university time is a great time to work out what you want to do for a bit. I certainly had no idea what I wanted to do coming out of high school. I wanted to be a veterinarian, but didn't get the marks to get into that degree programme, so I ended up doing bioinformatics, and then eventually wound up doing a computer science degree double major with history and philosophy of science. And I love my job now, working as an academic in technology ethics. But if you'd asked the straight-outta-highschool me about what I'd be doing in 10 years time, she would have had no idea I'd be where I am now. Going to university helped me to work out which path I wanted to take. Granted, I didn't go to an American university, and it somewhat depresses me to hear about how university is pointless etc. because I had some amazingly good courses and learned a lot at my university. But that was back when it was still well funded by the Australian government and less of the corporate entity it's become. So who knows, really? Anyway my point is that university is not just about coming out with a piece of paper, it's about exploring possibilities and different paths. And if you go to a good university that focuses on actually teaching interesting stuff rather than churning out pieces of paper, then you'll actually get something worthwhile.