Maybe I'm just drinking the Kool-Aid, but as a Senior at a pretty damn good college in the US, I don't think that my years here have been wasted. There was a time where I wanted to drop out and start a business, but I would have missed so much if I had.

I do not intend to be an academic, nor a professional. I would like to start a business someday. College didn't provide me with a set of skills which I can sell to an employer or employ to sell with. Rather–and this used to sound absurd to me as well–it improved my ability to teach myself.

I'm speaking from personal experience here, but I do think college has the same effect on my peers as well. I was a fairly proficient autodidact, teaching myself how to program in everything from C to Clojure, as well as a sizable array of other skills (double-entry accounting, for one).

But now I am able to pick up a book on the subject of abstract algebra and really learn the material. I know how to handle tricky political situations, where not all information is present and one party wants to get more out of the other. I have been exposed to people, cultures, and ideas that I would have been unlikely to come across had I dropped out to hack together a startup. I know how to talk to people with power. I am better able to see things from another perspective. I am a better person now, all around. (This paragraph is uncomfortably self-congratulatory, but I'll leave it in for what it's trying to convey.)

Sure, college is not for everyone. Some college are better than others, and some are better for specific purposes. But I have improved myself and my skills here, and I don't think I could have done the same had I not gone through college. I'm looking forward to changing the world in a big way.