Should you go to college or start a business?

Short and really biased answer; start a business but only if going to college doesn't feel right. Let me explain, first of all, I recommend everyone to at least finish high school because having a basic education is crucial to being able to understand the basics of how this world works and although you'll not actually use most of the info you get in school, it will help you puzzle together pieces of what the world is like, how it was built and how it functions.

Now moving on to college, this is a tough one, because as with many of these question, it depends on each individual person. Let me try to break this down, if you have the opportunity to go to school and it's not going to put you in debt, then go for it and do your thing on the side as well, this is very common in Nigeria and other countries, were education is given more value than profit. The federal and state backed institutions offer a decent and comparable level of higher education as those that are private, plus college is usually the best place to network and build lifelong connections. So if you can get a decent education, build a network, make friends and if you're not going into debt, then go for it. You'd figure out how to start a company on the side, but go to university, if the business picks up enough traction while you're there, you could always drop out.

Most people would really want to think about it; if the financial risk is worth the reward. I'm not sure that today there would be a guaranteed reward, of course the world needs doctors and lawyers and so on, at least for the time being, so if those are your dream job, go for it. If you want to become an engineer, a surgeon or basically anything that requires a specialized degree, you should obviously go for it, but then there are the rest, who want to be sure that at the end of their study they'd find some job security and pursue their passions, that's why most people may think that the university is a waste of time and money.

No offence, but your liberal art degree is worthless when it comes to the value you can offer in the market place, if you're looking to study anything business related like management, business administration, marketing etc, you're much better off creating your own business or joining a startup. With half the money you put into university, you could build a small business and learn first hand the struggles and what it takes to make it in the business world of today. At the end of three or four years, who do you think has a better chance at securing a job? Someone who spent the last four years actively trying different strategies or someone who wrote an essay based on things they found on Wikipedia and that's your backup plan because three or four years are enough for a business to grow, evolve and adapt in order to survive and sustain it's creator, that's why paying for a business degree today is less likely to secure that future you dream about.