college, land a good job and live happily ever after.

So what happens when a promising career -- not to mention a big paycheque -- precedes a college degree? Plenty of teen-agers with highly sought computer skills are skipping school, or at least deferring it for a few years.

And Mum's argument of "You should have something to fall back on, dear'' doesn't hold much sway against stock options and fat salaries. Besides, Bill Gates ditched Harvard and look what happened to him.

While computer-savvy kids have been lured for years by a market that needs their talents, the proliferation of Web sites and Internet start-ups has made the demand far more widespread since the early 1990s. Plus, "new economy'' salaries come with a lot more zeros.

"I can put my resume on a job-listing site and get 200 calls a day,'' says Joe Ingersoll, 22, a programmer in Marina del Rey, Calif., who left high school five years ago and has been working full-time since.

"And I can say, `I don't want to talk for less than $120,000, and these are the languages I want to work in'. It's really crazy for someone with no degree. But I have an extensive resume. People look at that and they salivate.'' It's the same for Drew Dara-Abrams, 16, of Los Altos, Calif., who has replaced high school with courses from a community college. He also consults for a local law firm's Web site. In his spare time, Dara-Abrams works with his mother on an online education site that will analyse how students learn and tailor lessons appropriately.

College is in his plans, although he has no firm timetable about when.

"I think the whole concept of sticking kids in a school for four years, it doesn't exactly work too well,'' Dara-Abrams said.

But while some kids have found decent incomes without college, most never will, said Tom Mortenson, a higher education analyst and publisher of the monthly Postsecondary Education Opportunity newsletter.

According to the US Census Bureau, there was a $19,114 median income gap in 1998 between men with a college degree and those with only a high school diploma. The gap was even higher for women.

High school graduates earned a median of $30,868 in 1998, the last year for which census data are available, compared with $60,168 for men with a masters degree.

Young tech wizards are an anomaly, of course.

"I suspect that if you look at who these kids are, they would have been clearly college calibre,'' he said.

Others have founded successful businesses in college and dropped out, such as Michael Dell, who started building computers in his University of Texas dorm.

Christopher Klaus left Georgia Tech his junior year to develop an idea he had for making Internet transactions more secure. The ensuing company, Internet Security Services Inc., posted revenues of $116 million last year, and Klaus donated $15 million four months ago to his almost-alma mater for a new computer centre.

But even with a market crazed to recruit skilled computer whizzes, college provides a foundation for learning and ought to be pursued, even by the brightest kids, said Paul Ohme, director of the Centre for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing at Georgia Tech.

"An educational institution should not be preparing you for today's jobs,'' he said. "They should be giving you a foundation so you can prepare yourself for the jobs that come around tomorrow.'' Ingersoll's younger brother, 20-year-old Abe Ingersoll, who followed much the same path from high school to full-time programming, spent a semester at a community college near his Los Angeles home. He found that relating to classmates proved difficult.

"I had a completely different mindset from most college students,'' he recalled. "I was living off savings and watching my IRA and worried about my stocks. It was just a different game.'' Associated Press