I believe the point is more that there is a growing sentiment that colleges are a waste of money, and that—purely for learning a trade—you're better off doing a bootcamp or self teaching.

That might be true, but apart from education, colleges offer lots of opportunities to make friends without explicitly trying to do that. You can make friends being self-taught, but you'll have to be proactive in going to social events because you won't be surrounded by like-minded people by default.