For clarifications sake, I consider myself a front-end dev and user experience guy. I like to stay between full fledge designing and full fledge programming. I understand the difference between fairy tell design, and what stuff can actually do. I think that's an important mindset to have.
If you plan on doing hardcore engineering, college is the way to go. I would also say if you are fortunate enough to get into a really good school, and get good scholarships, go for it if you feel it's what you want to do.
You know, there's an awful lot of psychology in interface design. Its not taught in very many places either. It might be worth investigating if you could start learning this kind of stuff on a distance basis so that you could future-proof yourselves to a certain degree.
If you plan on doing hardcore engineering, college is the way to go. I would also say if you are fortunate enough to get into a really good school, and get good scholarships, go for it if you feel it's what you want to do.