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I have been reading an unfortunately large amount of articles here on Hacker News seemingly deterring prospective students like myself from entering a university, especially from the field of Computer Science. They cite large tuition/living costs and "wastes of time" as not worth the potential four year education gained. These articles and blog posts claim that jumping straight into industry is an acceptable and perhaps even favorable alternative.

I don't think this viewpoint is credible, and you shouldn't listen to it. What is true is that, for many people going into college, it's a misuse (but a required one, often) of time because they're destined for non-college jobs. Widespread higher education is a waste of society's resources, and a lot of colleges out there aren't very good. But this decision isn't about society and its resources; it's about what's best for you.

What's best for you is probably to get a college education. It's very hard to get a decent job without one (and not so easy to get one if you have one, but that's another story).

Read every post on this thread. The advice here is great, and a good CS education will put you miles ahead (in terms of skill) of where you'd be without one. If, for some reason, you end up at a school that doesn't have a good CS program (a "Java school") then major in math and take the CS courses you like, plus independent studies.

As for which universities and colleges are decent, there are about 200 good universities and liberal arts colleges in the US, including most state flagships. You don't have to go to an Ivy or MIT to get a good education, and the drop off from Harvard to (for example) Penn State is measurable but not that steep; the academic job market is so rough that a lot of brilliant professors are ending up at middling universities. After you leave the top 200, the dropoff is much more severe.

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