What screws you up the most is if you get admission into a college, spend a lot of time taking courses but still can't graduate. If you graduate successfully or don't go to college at all you'll be fine.
I will take this on a different perspective, what it's like to work with degreed and non-degreed individuals. My wife was just mentioning working with someone that was resistant to change and I asked if she had gone to college, the answer was no. I deal with a number of IT people, the ones resistant to change are generally the non-degreed individual. The guys that I've run into that downgrade new systems from XP to 2000 were non-degreed. Those that don't want to think through the logic of locking people out after 3 attempts and requiring them to have 8 digit passwords with mixed case, alphanumeric and special characters (something like 56 billion possibilities) don't have degrees. In general, those that have gone to college are more likely to continue learning and adapt better to change. Of course we can point to a person here or there that succeded without a degree but there are plenty (like Google founders) that have degrees. And we can thank 4 universities in the western US for the Internet. I also found it interesting the way responses were written in this thread. The ones with no capitalization, werdz like ppl and frndz came from those who didn't complete a degree.
I think that also depends on the individual. We know someone who is highly educated, but is stuck in a box of resisting any kind of change, or thinking outside the square that his education put him in. No creativity or self motivation to discover new possibilities. I also know people with little education like this. But this is just the kind of people they are in both cases, no motivation to keep learning and trying new things. Just plod along with what they have always done. I also know some of the most creative, adaptable, motivated and amazing kids and young people you'll ever find... and they have had no "formal education" so to speak because they haven't been to any school, as they are home educated. They are the kind that will go on and on learning because to them learning is part of life, they learn because they have an insatiable urge to know things and understand, or because they need that new knowledge for whatever their next goal is. Some of them may very well go on to tertiary education (and are apparently highly valued by these institutions, as they are better equipped and self motivated for what is required in this new kind of education, than kids who have been been basically told what to do and when to do it at school), some won't, but most will always be striving to learn, be it in a formal setting, or by hands-on experience. I am definitely "for" education and learning as an ongoing thing, whether it be at college (or university as we tend to call it here) or in other forms. And certainly for many people, college is the best option, at least as a background preparation for what they want to do, whether they actually require it in the end or not. But it's not necessarily right for everyone. And I don't think it's necessarily the defining factor as to whether someone is adaptable/resistant to change, or continue to actively learn/stagnate. Maybe just more people who are motivated to learn and are adaptable in the first place tend to seek tertiary education, rather than the education itself making them that way.
You are not talking about the USA, please state what country you are talking about. Education in the US is heavily subsidized by taxes so you might as well use it. Except for private universities and graduate degrees, education cost about one fifth of what it will increase your earning power by.