As a college dropout myself, I don't think I've ever used this ridiculous "argument" to justify my decision. Are there seriously people out there who fancy themselves "The next Mark Zuckerberg", simply because they don't have a degree?
On the other hand, anecdotally, those dropouts who put their heads down and got stuff done, some of them did pretty well.
Finally, anecdotally, in my experience, people with college degrees got hired faster and in times of woe, are the last to be let go. In fact, many SV companies (Google, for example, but funded startups often work the same way), won't hire you without a college degree unless you've done something notable. Being notable, by definition, means you are in the minority of any group. making dropping out to achieve success a risky proposition.
Of course, your mileage may vary. ;-)
I think the fundamental issue is perception matters. The perception of having a degree matters to some people. To some people, its about performance metric X instead, etc.
There are plenty of reasons to drop out beyond "wanting to be Zuckerberg." How about "not wanting $100,000 of debt?" or "Prefering to be paid for my work?"
College just isn't for some people. It's not a bad thing or a good thing. It's just a thing.
i dropped out because i started college when i was 22. i was already working as a developer for 4 years.
when i got to college, it was more of the same and i was basically learning a lot of things that i already knew -- so for me, it was better to focus on working than working + going to college.
it worked quite well in my case.
This is really the best way to look at this.
I think for the vast majority of people, self-education is really, really hard. Even now in 2014, the material available online is very limited in scope and depth. Maybe some people could grab a college curriculum, get the lecture notes, buy all the books, and then sit down and truly learn all that material by themselves. I certainly couldn't.
People think having ruffled hair makes one like einstein, being highly assertive makes you like bezos, wearing jeans and polo shirt like job and so on.