I agree with your remarks about university, however I'm not sure if this applies to the majority of courses. Anyway, lately I have been trying gain knowledge by reading books that are non-programming related but instead focus on personal development, etc. so I think I know what you're trying to say.
And yeah, read as much as you can. But if I could tell you just one thing, it's that reading books is in no way comparable to going to a decent college. You'll be exposed, directly and indirectly, to so many different things at university. Things that would never have occurred to you otherwise.
You'll have to do projects that seem irrelevant, but being forced to learn X skill will pay off later in life. That's the main issue with being self-taught: you tend to only do things you're interested in, and as a result, you miss out on some of the more boring, important stuff.
Final thought: students have a ton of free time. Most don't manage their time well. Learn time management, and you can get a degree AND build a startup at the same time.
Best of luck!
In the end, it's about becoming an educated person. Will it help you learn programming? Probably not. But you will learn about the world in ways that are extremely unlikely to happen if you skip college. Things that may seem irrelevant, like the philosophy of science, the fundamentals of microeconomics, or any other "obscure" academic topic. Can you go to the library and read a book about the subject? Sure, but you probably won't even know what books to read. Even then, reading a book pales in comparison to a good course.
Also, I'd take advice from recent dropouts with a grain of salt. In all likelihood, they don't know what they don't know. In other words, life may be good now, but unless they had a broad pre-college education, or read classic literature, science, etc. for hours a day, they probably won't know what they're missing. Their frame of reference on the world is likely very narrow and limited to web development (or startups, or whatever.)
Edit: check out this design school in Germany (relatively close to Eastern Europe). When I was applying to schools, I looked into it and really liked what I saw. (I stayed in the US for a bunch of unrelated reasons).
http://kisd.de