Going to college is something that needs to be heavily researched if you live in the US in particular. School is expensive, school choice can have a huge impact on whether or not you'll even finish, and most degrees aren't worth the expense. Liberal arts schools are practically scams at this point, with most degrees leaving you even worse off after school because now you have a mountain of debt and a job paying the same you could have managed with a bit of gumption and effort without a degree.
The worst thing is that high school teachers anymore have all mastered the "go to college" rhetoric and don't bother establishing that having pre-existing direction is imperative if you don't want to waste time, money, and motivation. The system has established a perfect circle that will leave a generation in debt with degrees that don't match the field they actually ended up in. I make more money than the vast majority of people that actually finished their degree at the school I dropped out of which, to me, is pretty telling of the scam that school is for most people. If you're working at Starbucks during college and are still at Starbucks a year after college, you probably made a bad choice somewhere along the way that you were pushed into by all the insistence that no college means failure.
The funny thing is, I'm $30k in debt, yet I have more financial freedom than so many others. I was able to cover almost $2k in move in costs just a month ago, and yet I still have money in the bank, my credit is healthy, and I have a fresh new PS VR sitting downstairs.
I could be financially smarter, but that isn't the point here. I may as well finish this post with my criteria for going to school:
1) Research before school. Take a gap year or three if you have to in order to figure out what you actually want to do. A few years of potentially making less money is worth actually getting some kind of bang for your thousands of bucks.
2) Don't get a degree in a field that is dying or is already filled to the brim, and don't get a degree in an art based field. When it comes to art, practice and building your portfolio are things you can do for free, and opportunities to network are more prevalent in the real world than at school for the purpose. When it comes to most liberal arts degrees in general, they are either filled, dying, or fields where a degree doesn't make much difference. If you aren't going for an in demand field that will still be in demand in four years and truly benefits from having a degree, don't waste your time.
3) If you feel like you just have to go to college and you'll figure it out as you go, start by focusing on a more general degree that has at least some real world value, like accounting, even if it is a bit dull. Worst case is that you either drop out, or you leave with a degree that will at least get you a good enough job to be comfortable while you figure other things out.
I wouldn't say I regret the three years I spent at college. I figured out a lot about myself in a lot of ways, but it also bred a vehement hatred in me of the broken system of higher education in the US with rapidly rising costs and lowered standards and expectations. I did get my first job experience, which helped propel me into the temp work that got me into the permanent position I have now, but it's kind of funny I got everything I would have out of the job rather than the education I abandoned for a degree I didn't even really want but I settled on.
