How is this a question? How many high school grads have you interviewed and thought you could spin them up to the usefulness of a graduate from nothing in a reasonable amount of time/effort?
Education is expensive, sure. We can talk about that... but useful? It seems obviously useful to me.
Poster is more likely asking whether the education gained in college is actually useful vs the doors opened by having that diploma.
If one dropped out of college right before graduation with 99% of the education, likely that person would end up with worse off job prospects compared to the person who completed their program
However, they said college education not college diploma. They're clearly talking about the skills learned.
That said, the argument still stands with a candidate with a degree and a similarly aged candidate with no relevant work experience but similar maturity, odds are you'll still be able to pass the Pepsi challenge and see the difference.
Remember, I'm only arguing against the notion that college is useless.
If you're lucky enough to get a mentorship that will teach you everything you need right out of high school, great. Go for it. That's not exactly a common occurrence. College is a high cost, low risk way to get some experience and land a job but its certainly not useless.
And I went to a top-20 undergrad for CS. That doesn't mean it wasn't useful. It was. I use stuff I learned in my past education a reasonable portion of the time, now, as a researcher.
That doesn't mean that it was a more direct way to "get a job", had I the courage to try that path at the time, than just doing an apprenticeship would have been.
It all depends what your definition of "Education" is. If you mean a college degree, then I'd agree that in most cases (depending on your major), it's indeed not particularly useful.