Part of me thinks going through the whole process of one level of education can make you better. If you are doing the same thing after four years of school that you would do when you started, either you weren't paying attention, are unteachable, or were brilliant to start out. Part of me sees 16 year olds changing the world with only skin-deep knowledge (APIs, but not knowing the underlying processes), but ambition enough to float over mountains.
I can't seem to reconcile our broken world of code with things that require real education. You don't see an architecture student dropping out after two years to start his own architecture firm. We don't see premed students dropping out to start hospitals. We don't see kids in the air force academy dropping out and declaring themselves three star generals. But they'll certainly drop out to start a design firm or an online medical records system.
If collegiate computer science education weren't so utterly worthless, there might be fewer dropouts - why would a motivated and intelligent person spend four years of the most productive part of their life and approximately a hundred thousand dollars to learn things that are both largely useless and easily self-taught? If one's goal is to build a useful product and run a company (or do anything at all outside of academia), college is a very poor choice - the debt accumulated alone would sink any entrepreneurial dreams.
My only experience is with computer science, but I would suspect we would see a lot of rapid innovation in military fields were it possible for highly motivated and intelligent 20-somethings to drop out of the air force academy and become local warlords. The fact that the tech sector has so few consequences for failing and so few insurmountable bureaucratic standards is only for the best.
I can't seem to reconcile our broken world of code with things that require real education. You don't see an architecture student dropping out after two years to start his own architecture firm. We don't see premed students dropping out to start hospitals. We don't see kids in the air force academy dropping out and declaring themselves three star generals. But they'll certainly drop out to start a design firm or an online medical records system.