ok so just my 2 cents but if I was graduating high school today, I would NOT go to college-
-my brother is a software engineer works in tech, makes around $200k and some of his co workers never even graduated high school, let alone college. they were just very good coders
-many tech companies and other big companies (Apple, IBM, Google, Tesla, Netflix, Random House) are indicating that they will now accept certificates and things instead of college degrees
-many of my friends who went to my Ivy League college, and similar colleges, switched careers and did non-degree programs to switch into their current careers (digital marketing, UX, software engineering).
some of them also started businesses in new fields which didn't require their degree
-even people in my old, very traditional career path (environmental science/engineering) did not always have a college degree and/or their PE, even at very high levels.
I worked for the 2nd biggest eng. firm in the world.
-I don't do any work related to my degree at the moment (I am a digital marketing and business operations freelancer right now and am mostly self-taught).
I have worked for top brands as both an employee and freelancer in marketing and design and being self-taught in those areas has not been an issue for me
(I have a science degree)
my personal opinion is to only go to college if it's paid for, or you can go for a very low amount and not break the bank
student loans are crazy and I just don't see people getting the ROI with their degree that one would imagine
**unless you want to go into a profession that actually requires a degree**, like medicine or usually law, it does NOT seem worth it to me- maybe 10 or 20 years ago, but not at the current moment