The Anti-Dropout

1 and 2 you can ascertain through intensive reading and finding the right courses (which could cost money) - you have to be a pretty good autodidact but if you are, they're certainly possible. If you're not, then college will probably be a preferable path for learning most things - even stuff that's easily digestible online.

3 certainly isn't locked in academia; whether you can 'obtain' the knowledge from the field either is the interesting question. I'd guess the best way would be to just fail fast/iterate and hope you get the key pieces quickly.

The most interesting technical problems of the next decade won’t be solved in areas of knowledge that can be self-taught, and most technical knowledge remains locked up in traditional academia.

Disagree strongly with "can't be self taught". Graduate school is mostly teaching yourself; guided self-study.

It's just hard to do that when you also have bills to pay. Perhaps a new startup idea: how to make MOOCs look like work (as in what you're paid to do). There's often too much motion in those videos, while you miss out on some detail if it's audio-only.

The next generation of innovation will come from larger organizations, where traditional credentials are more highly valued than in degree-agnostic web tech startups.

Half-true. It'll come from small elite consulting firms that serve larger companies. In-house innovation at large companies is a political rat's nest. Either the program gets ruined by "they have to follow the same rules as everyone else" policies or the R&D center becomes a true CoE (Center of Excellence) and then everyone capable wants to work in it. Either way, I don't many large companies will succeed at this.

It was somewhat different in the age of the paternalistic corporation. You could talk to your boss and say, "I want to be working in PARC/Google-X/Bell Labs in 5 years" and start the discussion about how to get there. Now, you let it be known that you have higher aspirations and your ass gets fired.

Want to work on the self driving car? That Ivy league engineering credential is your ticket onto that sort of team.

No undergraduate degree accomplishes that. The MIT and Harvard grads face closed-allocation bullshit like everyone else. A PhD might get you halfway there. Still, I think it comes down to politics in most of these organizations.

If I'm being unduly critical, I still believe OP is making the right decision (of going back and getting his college degree) but I don't buy into his particular reasoning. I don't think anyone knows where The Future is coming from, but established organizations are not it.