From a UK point of view - I left University in 2001. I finished paying off my student loan this month. And this is strictly because I have a very well paying job (I believe that you do not start paying off the loan until you earn >£18k per annum). The job I have has nothing to do with my degree (getting a First in Multimedia Design and Virtual Reality didn't count for a lot 10 months after those 767's got flown into the towers). However, I do believe, had I chosen to do a degree that was actually useful, I may have felt that higher education was the only way. As it is, I could have got a job at 18, arrived where I am now at 26 instead of 31 and then got my company to put me through a degree at their expense. Not done much research, but if there was an option to study a large amount of entrepreneurialism at degree level, then this would really float my (and a lot of other peoples) boat.