Often, university degrees simply show that the person learned how to learn.
They may not KNOW all they were taught, but they have a foundation.
You absolutely can get hired WITHOUT a degree. Impressing the hell out of a interviewer by displaying great people skills and a box full of your work can do the trick.
The degree shows less than the box of projects. The degree shows a willingness to learn, but the projects show an urge to learn.
Without a teacher, you went on your own (Showing great personality traits) educated yourself past the point of most in your position and designed, built, debugged, coded, etched, etc... you own products.
You can read and understand a schematic, you can read and understand a datasheet, and you know what boron and phosphorus is used for.
You may start a job at a lower pay grade, but you also dont have the college loans to pay back.
At the rate that technology changes, a good self-educator is better than a good learner. WHY?
Because no one is teaching you after you leave the school.
The autodidact is interested in the technology as a hobby and not just a job. The company can be confident in the fact that you will keep them competitive without having to hire n00bs every year just to have someone on the team that knows the latest things being taught in school.
If you have products you made in your hands, that proves that you can make a company products that, with their marketing, can prosper.
Me? I'm relegated to washing toilets.