In Engineering I know a lot of what you learn at college/uni is pretty redundant and to be honest it's only worth doing it for that bit of paper, that's your ticket to more money in the future. As others have said, people wont even entertain you without a degree for certain job roles. I've been lucky to do my education as part of an apprenticeship and the things I have learned by doing the job far out-weigh what I have learned in a classroom. We had a couple of lads in for the 3rd year placement of their degree, they were intelligent lads but their idea of what engineering was and what it actually is was so far apart. I'm not sure if Gin agrees as she took a different route into Engineering than me, but for what I do that's how I find things .