Very true. Unfortunately, my options were "mature and learn at college" or "work a minimum wage job in rural America" after high school graduation, and given my years of experience at that point with minimum wage jobs and rural America (since I couldn't afford to move away from my parents), the choice was very clear. I spent that time at college maturing and learning, and now I work a very rewarding, intellectually stimulating job in software. In a climate where nobody knows how to code and education is not highly valued, I would never have picked up programming or computer science and ended up where I am now if I hadn't gone to college. I'm very glad to be earning decent money and living in an big city (personal preference, admittedly) instead of working minimum wage food service or manual labor.