Completely agree. Not to belabor the point (this topic comes up on HN very often), but college was such an eye opening experience for me, that I feel like our world would be a better and more enlightened place if everyone had the chance to go. It's not just about learning to program (which you can do on your own and on the job), but about challenging your "beliefs" and opinions (which you might find are simply wrong).

Maybe you can learn all of this outside of class, but being forced to challenge your world view is a powerful thing.

Ignorance is one of the biggest problems in this world.