The cost of university is "(tuition) + (missed income while in university) - (amount university helps your career prospects vs. 4 extra years of work experience

The cost of university is "(tuition) + (missed income while in university) - (amount university helps your career prospects vs. 4 extra years of work experience)". Tuition is skyrocketing, which is the biggest incentive to skip university. Also, the information is out there. You can learn with books and from the Internet, which wasn't available as much 20 years ago. It might be a rational choice to skip University and instead use the tuition money to bootstrap a business. However, the TOP universities are probably still worth it, because people will hire and invest in you based solely on where you went to school. Lazy people use the university admissions process as a way to avoid having to think about evaluating you themselves.