I am a huge advocate of formal education, and I think there is some undefinable benefit to “going away to college,” but in general I would say never, ever go into more than the absolute minimum of debt (based on your situation) for a bachelors degree. If you engage with the material and your professors and your classmates, you can get the real benefits a university degree actually provides.

I’d also say that while there is a certain danger in getting trapped in musty old college attitudes about what is “worth” studying, going the other way there is at least as big a risk in falling into the autodidact traps of either having no breadth of exposure or, god forbid, not having someone guide you through and out of some crazy rabbit holes (cough-ayn-rand-cough).