Is it the degree or the education
Firstly, I don't have a degree in computing of any sort. Secondly, I've got about 12 years experience at all levels.
Over the years I've employed developers with and without degrees, and to be honest the ones without degrees tend to be better. Their skill set tends to be more up to date, they tend to be able to think their way around problems. Graduates tended to be only able to do things in one particular way, and that way often two or three years out of date.
This is changing now though. We're seeing graduates who've got themselves some work experience in a real company, learning that a developers job isn't always just sitting down and typing away in your preferred language, coding what you decide you want to code. There's a whole lot more to making yourself employable than just getting a degree. We've had graduates in the past that turn up late, leave early, dress poorly, refuse to answer phones or doors, talk loudly and wonder why they don't last through their trial periods. We've also had bedroom coders with the same problems, but they tend to not think that the job should be theirs because they've got a bit of paper.
But it is changing, some Universities are realising that the degrees they were offering weren't making their students employable so they've started working with companies to give their students "real world" experience.
For me personally though, do I wish I'd gone to uni and got a degree? No. Back then there were no degrees in what I now do. What I could have done would have been a waste of time. IT moves fast, and thankfully the unis are starting to catch up to working at that speed.
Do I think that students deciding whether or not to go to University should go? Yes, but choose *very* carefully which University, and which course you go to. If you can, talk to the people at the sorts of companies you want to work for and find out what *they* think of the degrees. And if you do go, get involved in as much of the social aspect of the computing courses as you can. I still think you learn just as much from talking to other developers as you do from text books.