I don't know from your handle whether you're male or female. Also I'm not clear on what you do, but it seems that "trouble that comes with the alternative" is trouble from your family.
So is your claim that college is worth the trouble because college guarantees that it will separate you from your family?
I don't think most college graduates become self-sufficient -- many of them seem to still depend on their families for many years. Of course, I'm going from informal observation and anecdote, not statistical surveys.
I'm an overachieving elitist graduate student. The trouble that comes with the alternative is a return to life outside the comfortable swaddle of academia. I don't need
another degree to get a job. I turned down an obscenely lucrative position to do what I'm doing right now. I need the degree I'm working towards to get a job in a field that interests me, insure that I get free trips to Europe every year and three months worth of vacation. So when I talk about dealing with undergraduates, I do so from the perspective of a GA/TA and I watch every day as the vast majority of them piss away an opportunity to make the most out their college experience. Certainly part of the burden lies on educators, but you can't make a diamond ring out of a lump of shit. a lump of drunk ass shit lacking the sense (not used in the same sense as intelligence) to know that getting drunk until dawn every night is not an effective study strategy.
Furthermore, most college graduates I have known become self-sufficient far more quickly than people who don't go or drop out. I dropped out my first time, and it took me two years to find a steady job that paid me enough to eat regular- no joke. That job was sacking groceries. It took me two more years to find a job in a professional environment- and that was due largely to nepotism. i got hired by a friend of mine who had graduated from college, a shitty, shitty joke of a college at that, less than a year before. He was my boss for two years before getting promoted- a promotion I was not eligible for, because...wait for it... I had no degree.
It was the same at several companies, no degree meant you could not have the good gig. As I was approaching completion of my BA I was offered, upon completion, the opportunity to take a position that more than DOUBLED my wage. Sure you can get a job without a degree, but most of the good paying ones go to people with a college education. I have worked all manner of shitjobs, I have looked for work more times than I want to remember- take a look in any American paper, or on any employment website, compare the jobs that don't require a degree to the ones that do.
Furthermore, if you want to do something really cool- at least the type of things I think are cool, a college degree isn't enough. you have to do internships and field schools and get REALLY good grades to get the good spots. I don't mean to offend anyone, because everyone makes their own choices, but as for me, i have no intention of settling for anything less than extraordinary. I don't care how much glass I have to eat to get it. I've had plenty ordinary, and it's not for me.