It's clearly possible to do pretty well without a university degree, and I think there's a few slam-dunk cases where you shouldn't get a degree: 1) You don't a

It's clearly possible to do pretty well without a university degree, and I think there's a few slam-dunk cases where you shouldn't get a degree: 1) You don't actually want to do the work to finish a degree, 2) your only options are to get an extremely mediocre degree, or 3) you will have to go into savage debt to get a degree. Then there are the exceptional folks who could do well anywhere (who, presumably, would also be the high-flyers if they went to a university). For everyone else, getting a decent degree should almost be a no-brainer. It will be useful. HR will like it, pretty much forever. The "lost years" of work experience will rapidly converge to insignificance (a point that seems lost on the folks who think that it's only university degrees become less significant as you get older). You can do a range of subjects - some of them, shock horror, not narrowly vocational (a lot of the discussion here seems to imply that the sum total of what we should learn after high school somehow begins and ends with "programming and computer science"). Further, you can do these subjects at a much higher level and with greater intensity than the whole "hey, I read a couple books on Philosophy or did the first level of Duolingo in Spanish" or some such. It should be a pleasant time where you get to try some new activities, meet a lot of people - maybe including a life partner, but maybe just good friends and some "early-adult romantic" relationships (which IMO are likely to greatly increase your chance of learning what you really want and how to get along in the real grown-up world). The whole tertiary sector is pretty messed up right now (even pre COVID), so buyer beware. Don't do a crappy degree.