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I'm going to get straight to the point and try to be as concise as possible to avoid ambiguity and "TL;DR"'s.
I've clocked up 17 years of existence, and have a bit of a dilemma with regards to pathways into a career in information security (I understand it's a diverse field with many different roles) - academia has NEVER appealed to me and I hate the notion of studying for a further 3-5 years at university once I've finished school to obtain a paper qualification only to have to enroll on a graduate programme to get me up to scratch to a company's desired level.
Having studied Physics/Maths at school - I decided to self-teach myself programming with Python to begin with and set up a Linux virtual machine to muck about in and explore.
I also managed to land myself a part-time job involving UNIX scripting alongside a security researcher at a small company and am thoroughly enjoying it as well as improving my knowledge in other areas such as network security, web applications etc...
Which leads me to my title question - the company I'm working with may offer to keep me on and provide me with basic training (a sort of early graduate scheme) & encouraging me to take certifications from the likes of CompTIA, Cisco etc. - is it worth it for me to avoid university/getting a degree to pursue a job which I thoroughly love with the risk of potentially affected long-term propects (many employers are requiring a degree to get you past the HR filter).
In the UK (where I live) - with increasing amounts of people pursuing university, the value of a degree seems to be declining & topped with a three-fold increase in tuition fees it seems to be looking like a an increasingly unattractive option.