Do you really need college?
It depends on what you want to do with your life, really.
Do you need college to be successful?
Not necessarily, but probably.
If you want to start a small business or get into real estate or something you could conceivably be successful at, you don't really need a degree in anything (though it might help in some cases). You do, however, need a good work ethic, which some might say is more important than education.
If you do need college to be successful, is it because of what college offers you, or is it because employers have set arbitrary requirements for degrees?
Certain fields require you to have a degree. Sometimes in a specific field of study, and sometimes not.
Some will claim that college can help you learn to structure your life and the way you think as well as providing you with information. For example, an English major would probably be able to write all this better than I can.
More generally, some would claim that having the responsibility to balance your own workload help people be more responsible and independent. This point is clearly debatable and is hugely subjective, but it still is argued that gaining these qualities can help you be successful, just as much as the information that you would absorb.
What do you gain from college?
See above for one point.
For another, obviously, a job in your field of study. If you picked the right field of study.
With the prices of tuition in the US (Canada is still pretty reasonable), one can usually simply not afford to get an education for education's sake. It
has to be a cost/payoff calculation, otherwise you end up like
this lady who ought reasonably to have known that a PhD in medieval history would only net her a bare-bones teaching job, or
these kids who ought reasonably to have known that their art degrees wouldn't get them very far. Both of these examples have people on welfare and food stamps who still have to pay off massive student loans that got them nowhere. Loans, which, by the way, are
often not erased by personal bankruptcy proceedings.
Is attending college a "fad"?
If so it's been a fad for a long, long time.