I dunno (I'm being kinda folksy!). It was just arguing and not really qualifying as a refutation, which generally but not always implies proof. (I did look that up to check my suspicion, but in a big dictionary.)
I would be interested in people's experiences, good and bad, with having (not) gone to college, and serious analysis - everyone seems to be trying to shut down any serious discussion and exploration.
I went to college and I've had many times that I wished I'd studied harder. I've also wished at times that I skipped college then and went later in life, when I would benefit far more. I haven't wished that I didn't go; I learned so much that forms my understanding of the world, my thinking skills, etc.; I would be a different person without it. You can't tell me that I didn't benefit greatly from college but I'm just one person. But can you tell anyone that they studied for four years, hard, and didn't learn much? That's a big stretch for anyone; you need to learn enough to pass ~32 classes at various college levels, and that's a minimum.
Many people say here that 'I didn't go and I'm fine'. Fine isn't the question; nobody said we'd die without it, but that's not our standard for our choices. Each path leads to different collections of outcomes, better and worse and completely different, and we have blind spots about what the other path could be like (having no experience of it). Maybe college emphasizes different skills, develops different tools, with different advantages and disadvantages, as an example of how that would work.
I also wonder how much HN readers think of or have experienced STEM only. The humanities is more important (unpopular, I know, and both are essential IMHO); it addresses the most critical issues in the world and life, the ones beyond quantitative understanding, which is most of them.
I watched a bunch of Shakespeare plays recently, fictionalized histories of Rome and England [0]. From them you learn more about our current society and humanity in general, including today's crazy disfuntion, the mis/disinformation and people's responses, than from all the quantitative research combined; art is a mirror that looks into ourselves. And as objects of another human being's creation, they are incredibly inspirational and beautiful. I'm wiser and have grown since a week ago. Would I turn to Shakespeare and get so much from the plays without studying literature in college? I doubt it, though that's just me.
[0] Without knowing the reader's experience with the Bard, let me recommend Julius Caesar especially, also Henry VI Part 2 and Part 3, and of course their sequel, Richard III. Richard II is good too. I'd skip Henry VI Part 1 but read a synopsis as context for Part 2: Part 1 is clearly substandard IMHO and, it turns out, is believed to be mostly written by a collaborator, Christopher Marlowe. It does constrast the difference between an excellent playwright of their day using the same forms and an all-time genius of character and language.