Comment: ok, I'm old

Old enough to be from the time where no one thought it necessary to go to college to get ahead in the business world. Straight out of HS I entered the corporate world and all you needed back then was a bit of drive to get ahead and I did. I moved from department to department nosing my way around every facet of each department and learning it all. Within 5 years I was running my own department - a new department that I helped set up and I was doing the hiring and eventually the firing - all at the ripe 'old age' of 23.
Some years later I'm at a different company and needed to hire someone and the guy above me brought me a list of candidates and mentioned something about looking at the ones with college degrees. I asked why and was offered a strange-to-me reason that they would somehow have more know-how. I then pointed out that I had no college degree and if those degrees were the new criteria I would never get hired again. I actually felt a bit insulted that I could somehow be thought of as something less because I didn't have that piece of paper. Seems to me that college/university has become another government 'industrial complex' requiring large fees to prepare for jobs that really only require a bit of hard work and common sense to get ahead.