If you are already successful in some career by the age of 20, whatever that career is, then it's not so important to go to college. It doesn't matter if that career is playing tennis, acting in movies, or being an entrepreneur.

However, it's a rare person that is so successful by the age of 20 that it's clear that college is optional. Don't kid yourself that most entrepreneurs don't go to college. If you define "entrepreneur" to mean people that start a local plumbing business, you might be right. But if you're thinking of the type of people that have made it big in Silicon Valley, there's few that have no degree all, but plenty that went to grad school.

Also, bear in mind there is more to life than making money. Sure someone like Natalie Portman didn't need to go to Harvard to be able to earn a living, she was already a movie star. But she got a lot out of the experience anyway.

Last thought... it's one thing to actually have a great business that's taking off and decide you need to stick with it, not miss your moment by going to college. It's another thing entirely if you're talking about a hypothetical scenario, and maybe looking to give yourself an excuse for avoiding something you don't want to do anyway.

As a recent college graduate (and, at one point, a college dropout), I can tell you that the answer is: it depends. When trying to decide whether to go to college, you must consider the three primary things that you get out of a college education.

1) Networking
College can be an excellent avenue for networking - that is, making connections to help you find a career. However, you must be extremely proactive to make these sort of connections in college, as there are often thousands of other students such connections are constantly interacting with. Networking can be done outside of college as well. Therefore, it is best to consider networking as an added benefit to a college education, because its value is rarely equal to the cost of lost income while tied up in education and school costs.

2) Higher earnings
Higher earnings are the primary reason most people attend college, and the payoff is indeed great (as much as one million extra dollars over a lifetime by some estimates). More importantly, the payoff completely offsets the cost of the education, ON AVERAGE. This means that most people will benefit monetarily from a college education. However, a young entrepreneur may not, when you consider the lost income that will result from him or her taking time off to go to school.

3) Self-enrichment
College does provide a unique environment for self-enrichment. You will definitely change as a person and become more well-rounded in your knowledge from a college education. While you can certainly self-educate, college forces you to actually get around to educating yourself, as well as providing teachers to help you when you have questions. College is certainly valuable in this sense, but you must decide yourself whether the value is equal to the time and money it requires.

At the end of the day, the decision of whether to attend college is really just a game of math. You must consider the total net benefit by consider the following:

Total Benefits (higher earnings, self-enrichment, networking) - Total Costs (tuition, lost income, etc) = Net Benefit

If the net benefit is positive, you should go to college; if not, there is no reason to attend.

A few enterpreneurs are hugely successful on their first venture, but many are not. The young enterpreneur may need to take on a "real" job when their ventures fall flat. Earning a degree shows prospective employers that you are capable of following a program through to completion.

Sometimes it doesn't matter how much you have learned from life experience or self-education, when you want to get financing for a small business or other enterprise, lenders generally want to see a degree.

If you are already successful then you do not need a degree. College is highly overrated, the point of college is the degree if you work for yourself you do not need a degree. This is not to say that you do not need college level education. This is a very different matter, staying educated and ahead of the curve is very important, this can be done by taking single courses that interest you rather than going for a full degree, it will be much cheaper and you will not be bogged down with classes that are completely unnecessary. Many brilliant entrepreneurs have gone on to be extremely successful without a college degree though the thing that they all seem to have in common is that they managed to educate themselves above and beyond a basic college level. Just because they did not graduate from college does not mean they did not spend a lot of time self educating. If you skip the degree you will want to find a good reading list on your particular subject of interest and those surrounding it and Read Read Read, keep yourself educated it will give you the edge up on the competition. Education does not have to be done in the formal traditional way. Most people who went to college will tell you that the core information they really use consists of about 25% or less of their actual course work. Local community colleges can have courses that are just as good as the big expensive universities, there is a lot of nonsense surrounding chosing a "good" college. A name only matters if you are not succesful, then yes saying "I have a degree from harvard business school" may help you more than having a degree from "Springfield community college", if you are already successful it is the coursework that matters not the name. Don't get suckered out of a $100,000 for a four year university when you can get most of the good courses covered for under a few 1000 or less.

If young entrepreneurs are content with what they have achieved and won’t mind their businesses growing at a slow pace than their competitors, then going to college is not required. Success not only means money and reputation. Any entrepreneur is incomplete without college education pertaining to business. If you do not have a college degree, then you lack the vision and fundamentals that help you and your organization grow. Educated entrepreneurs are incessantly looking at avenues with bright prospects and have the caliber to use these opportunities to expand their business. A college education is not something that you leave behind in college once you graduate. It is enduring which you want to use throughout your professional life. Business education that I took at CollegeAmerica ( http://www.collegeamerica.edu/ ) has helped me a lot in my business endeavors.

well for me having a degree is quite a good option even though you are successful in life There will still be an empty space, you may lose all your wealth but knowledge is the only t hing they can't take away from you