You don't need college to achieve your dreams. Many of the brightest minds never went to college. All you need is ambition. 

High school; a conditioning ground 

I grew up in an upper-middle class, white-dominated suburb. I had access to some of the "best" education and extra curricular activities you could ask for. Some of the "best" teachers and facilities in the world. Class sizes of 700 were commonplace. Keep in mind our academic curriculum had no financial or entrepreneur related classes. Just your typical, useless consumer science, shop, english, social studies, languages etc. We were told all throughout our top-tier high school that college would be our gateway to success, the only means of us achieving what we truly wanted out of life. What it truly did was make the high school's statistics look good. 

So my 18 year old, conditioned brain began to apply to these promising colleges. All my friends were doing it, so why not? Plus it would get me out of my house. I got accepted to a private liberal arts college, of which cost around $40,000/year. Who cares though? It was fashionable to do in my privileged area. My parents took out a loan for me and I was off. Not once did I think about the cost afterwards, nor did I think it would be so unfairly high. 

College; an overpriced hobby

I decided to major in neuroscience and psychology. The college I went to was phenomenal.....academically speaking. We were immersed in our major of choice right off the bat. Class sizes were always under 40 students and you got to really know your professors on a personal level. By senior year, class sizes were commonly under 10 students, at least for the neuroscience kids. I learned a lot and really enjoyed the educational side of things, for the most part. However, this being a liberal arts college, they had to put on a certain image of diversity and equality. Foreign students taking less than half the credits I was were given the best dorms. Gender neutral bathrooms were always a big issue on campus. If girls and guys can't shit in the same room, everyone has got to know about it. Meanwhile, the central banks are participating in fractional reserve banking schemes and contributing to unspoken levels of fraud, ya know, problems that really matter? Anyways, I quietly went about my business and finished in 4 unnecessarily prolonged years, with irrelevant classes such as english and sex & gender, each extra year costing $40,000, plus interest since I took out a loan. My point being that 4 years of undergrad is not needed. 2 years of focused academic work is plenty.

So I graduate with a 3.6 GPA. I start applying for jobs. And you figure, I'll be making at least what I spent a year to go to college. Nope. $14.00 an hour at a research position at a lab. Generously speaking before taxes, that's $28,000/year after finishing one of the most academically rigorous majors you could have taken, neuroscience at a well respected institution. 6 months after graduating, my school loan bill comes in the mail. Oh no sweat, just a measly $180,000 debt paid at a rate of $1,400 a month for the next 10 years of my life, so no time to move up in a company and get raises to be able to afford that. Oh and the bank I took a loan from doesn't participate in income based repayment. Nor do student loans permit you to file for bankruptcy; in other words, you pay it till you die. So I'm fucked. Going back to school? Out of the question. Applications for grad school each cost $200 and I'm not about to take out another loan and give more money to a system that straight-up failed me. Sweet. 

So I've adapted and been working good paying bridge painting jobs, delivery driver jobs, carpentry jobs. Things I should have been doing from the beginning, learning how to manage money and invest in things that really matter to me (like bitcoin and starting a business) instead of getting preyed on by loan companies, waste more years of my life and be a slave to a failed, brain-washing, educational system whilst living at my parents house.  

Heed my warning and think long and hard before going to college and if you do, go for something that you don't need to go back to school for to make a good living, like the sciences. Use a fraction of the money that you would have paid to go to school for and invest in starting a business or something you are truly passionate about. If I would have started working right out of high school, taken 1/10 of the money I paid to go to school ($18,000) and invested it in bitcoin or a business at the time, I would have learned just as much if not more and may have been much better off without an ungodly amount of debt. We are exposed to an educational system early on that does not stress finances nor business, essential real-life skills. It does not emphasize the importance of being aware of ones thoughts sensations and feelings, the source of our decision making. But hey, hindsight 20/20, right?