My 2 cents: College has also many cons. Apart from the monetary issue, college forces talented people to learn things way more slowly than they could, in a much less efficient way than its possible. College also forces you to go through some very uninteresting classes. Some people would argue that this good, since in the "real world" that is often what happens. I don't like this line of reasoning: that is part of the problem. You shouldn't do what you don't like, and college shouldn't teach you that. From a biological point of view, college is the most productive time in your life.
Should we really be forcing (and by that I mean: should the people hiring engineers require a degree) people to sit through slow, sub-optimal, boring classes during their most productive years, in the hope that they get used to being unhappy most of the time?
College may be good to some people, but it may also hurt a lot of talented people, who waste their valuable time and become used to the fact that its ok to be unhappy with what you're doing. It's not.