Even a gender studies degree would have a lot of value. A lot of people who get university degrees, myself included, end up working in a completely unrelated field, but that doesn't mean the education was worthless.

"A fully qualified engineer will be in a much better position to provide valuable products and services than an 18 year old noob."

Not sure I totally agree with this. I have meet a ton of very smart fully qualified engineers who have no business sense whatsoever.

That does not mean I am discounting the engineering degree. Not at all. At least an engineering degree will generally give you a very nice return. What makes a good engineer though is not often the same as what makes a good entrepreneur.

Guess the point is: All else being equal, someone with a relevant degree will have an easier time being a successful entrepreneur (and, not less important: a reasonable backup plan) than someone fresh out of high school. Likely they will have a better network too. And this is all assuming that entrepreneurship is really the goal, which, lets face it, for most people is an unreasonable trade-off of safety, personal time, health and comfort for nebulous "freedom" and a very unlikely chance at striking gold.

"All else being equal, someone with a relevant degree will have an easier time being a successful entrepreneur"

I think that is where we may disagree.

Plenty of Entrepreneurs who made it big without a degree. Some of the top of our time actually. http://www.businessinsider.com/top-100-entrepreneurs-who-mad...

"for most people is an unreasonable trade-off of safety, personal time, health and comfort for nebulous "freedom" and a very unlikely chance at striking gold."

This I somewhat agree with but I oftentimes wonder if a lot of the "very unlikely chance" part of it has to do with the inaccurate and unrealistic image the start-up scene places along with the lack of good education on starting a business. You can build a very comfortable life running your own business without being a unicorn but seems as though most are shooting for unicorn level. That I believe is where most of the failure comes from.

It really isn't all that difficult to build a $200k to $500k+ year small business. Easier today than ever. But that's not sexy so people shoot for the stars and miss more often than not.

It's not completely useless ... Yet, but with the shift the world is taking (globalisation, *robotisation and move to renewables) it will be. Some engineering degree too will put not have a place in the future.

What he's saying is that a college education does not have ton map directly to a job to be useful. So even in your example an engineering degree will have some value.