"Being a student is a essentially a full-time job which one is compensated a negative amount."

College for me was like getting a dream retirement in at the beginning of my career.

I and many of my friends had the best time of our lives, didn't do a damn thing that wasn't in our best interest, lived away from home with partial parental support, worked jobs in the vacations, met people from all over the world, had challenging experiences with a strong safety net, were exposed to extraordinary people who were paid and predisposed to give us their time, etc etc.

I got a lot more out of college than I could ever use on an engineering team. And a lot that I can.