I hear ya on the mentality. I myself went through 4 years of school and at the least year was kicked out of Business school and university(two grades below C, was retaking the classes THAT semester, suffice to say, fighting etc I lost). So i'm paying my tuition for an education I didn't complete(i was a 3.0 average except that previous semester). While at school they filled your head with that nonsense that you will MAKE MORE than a person without a degree, and yes for some they will.
For me, my experience is what landed me a job in a field totally unrelated to what I had been going to school for. My hobby, became my career(I'm a system's support analyst for pharmaceutical companies.).
I didn't say or expect anything, I am confident, and I think that has more to do with landing a good job. Confidence and experience. Looking back at my days at the University, I want to go back just to learn about the subjects that interested me but I'll never go back with the expectation that it is better for me.
School is a business, a good one, with high profits and low investment. They try to manipulate you, break you and hammer it into your head that if you don't come to this place of higher education you will amount to NOTHING. And for some it works, they work a dead end job getting paid minimum wage for the rest of their lives. Then there are people who take what they have, what they know and push into opportunity.
If I owned a company, the last thing I would want, is a NO EXPERIENCE, book educated baboon. I want the guy that went to the school of life, learned life's lessons and learned what it means to work along side his education. If you only have the book education get the life education and come back to me. If you have life education, then your golden. Life education will teach you far more than a book ever will(unless its one of the big sciences).
Business School, or Business Experience? I went to school for administration and management and I learned nothing important. A diagram about decision making and how to make a decision, all common sense but somewhat deemed important and to be followed at all times. Business is a beast, unpredictable. You do not predict it, you adapt and conform to it. Analyzing countless corporation studies and performing lecture upon lecture about their faults and how they could have turned around. In Business school they literally tried to make you into an elitist, Starbucks drinking, I'm better than you snob. Work for big brother and get big gains.
I had to deal with so many "educated" kids that had such a [censored] poor work ethic and wanted to get paid more than I was getting paid.
It's ridiculous. This is the elitist [censored] that gets drummed into their heads. This mentality is what makes loan companies thrive. Don't be egotistical, be human. If your human, you get your degree and you stand out from the rest of your peers because you know something about the real world they don't. The world gives you what you put into it, nothing more and nothing less.
Goto school, get your education, but pair it with other useful opportunities.