Many colleges put courses up online for free. There is a huge opportunity for people who want to put the time in to get a very high quality education (not degree, but an education) by using these resources. Same thing with the knowledge available in libraries. Some people take advantage of these resources in incredible ways. You'll find people who taught themselves to be a software engineer using only free online sources, etc. However there are many people who are not successful software engineers despite having equal opportunity though access to all the same resources.
