I think that should be amended "If your goal is to have a career in research go for a PhD".

In the end, that's the POINT of a doctoral degree, is to prepare you (and prove you are prepared) to conduct original research in a field. There are two types of jobs: In one type, a PhD will overqualify you and either make you unhireable or left with salary far below your education level (i.e. you, at 26+ will make the same as a 22 year old just starting out). In the other, it is the minimum qualification to get hired (this is mostly commercial and academic research).

Whether you get one or not should depend entirely on your career goals. A PhD, over the long run, will probably not increase your earning potential, and certainly costs a lot more time and sanity.

Well, you would make more if you were in the workforce longer. If your only goal by getting a university degree is "to get a job" and "make money", it's quite obvious you can do it without that. Personally, I don't care how much I would make, I find network admin extremely unsatisfying and would dread waking up each morning to do that.

You're completely correct. Also, a degree in Computer Science isn't MEANT to prepare for a career in IT, it's meant to teach you the Bachelor-level material about COMPUTER SCIENCE. That knowledge (i.e. the "theoretical stuff") is far from useless.

If you want to be the one designing the next generation of programming languages, you would need it. You need it to write non-trivial compilers. The list goes on. There's plenty available in the job market for a CS major and actually wants to do CS. If you plan to do IT, though, much of what you learn will not directly apply to directly to a job you are interesting in.

People well-educated to join the IT market know more about network topologies, queuing theory, some degree of business planning, higher level (as in "bigger picture") notions of security (as opposed to OS and lower levels). Oftentimes universities do not have education in this field, and the default is to get a CS degree instead, which is certainly fine in the sense that you are getting a degree in a closely related field that is also challenging and forcing you to learn how to learn (one of the SKILLS that university actually teaches you).

If you want to rise high in IT, expect on-the-job training or perhaps postbaccalaureate certifications. Computer Science is often a more academic pursuit (this is certainly true of many subfields) and suits itself more to being taught as a university degree, whereas IT has several "trade skills" that are better taught in the field.

As for the original poster, a trade school is not a bad place to start to get something that distinguishes you from other candidates. It may also teach you some things you didn't know, and give you some skills that will make you more competitive in the job market.

However, to you and those that refer to higher education as "a piece of paper", I would not carry around that attitude for too long. You are not morally superior for rejecting university any more than they are for embracing it, and believe it or not the in the 3+ years people spend in university to get their degree(s), they do learn a thing or two, and you will have to gain that knowledge (and the associated experiences) in other ways. To work alongside/eventually above people that do have said education, you will have to accept that they bring something valuable to the table from that education, just as your education and experience are valuable.

If the response from anyone here is "I went to university and it was useless, I didn't learn anything", then it wasn't the university's fault, it was yours. You did it wrong and wasted your and every faculty member's time. And perhaps a fair amount of money.