I think you're forgetting the most important part of college: meeting smart people your age. Certainly possible to do elsewhere, but very easy at college
This is the primary advantage of the ivy league schools. If your goal is hacking, there isn't a lot that you'll learn at school that you wouldn't self study. Aside from meeting people, the primary advantage of college is providing an account of how you spent your time while you teach yourself software engineering.
Most any decent school for CS will have at least one student group that is very project oriented. It's not just a matter of meeting people, but rather meeting people who can help introduce you to new ideas and work on projects that are beyond the easy scope for a single person. Plus, if you're interested in anything hardware related they'll likely have better equipment available than a lone student is likely to.
That's a great argument for moving to a good college town, getting a decent job, and crashing the student group without enrolling. That's what jwz did at CMU, right?
Yes, but you could still meet interesting people your age without being 50k in the red.
In reality, the most interesting people you would like to meet are neither your age nor at your school (truth is, most are probably long dead; that's where the books come handy, to make the communication of knowledge timeless.)
