The issue's being explored everywhere from medical schools to Donald Trump's reality show, "The Apprentice". Well, here's some water-cooler wisdom from the website, The Motley Fool .com.

Remember playing that board game The Game of Life? When your little car came to that fork in the road, you had to decide between going to college and getting a head start in the workplace. One way raised your earning potential but required time and borrowing money. The other got you on the road to earning money faster. You could go either route and still win the game - and that seems to be the case in the real world too.

Smarts aren't the only thing that matters. Drive, ambition, and luck also play a big part. Here's how some of the most successful folks in business turned at that fork in the road of life:

First, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs - the two biggest names in the technology business. Both are billionaires who've become household names - and both dropped out of college. Then there's "rebel billionaire" Richard Branson, head of the Virgin Atlantic empire. Branson didn't even bother making it through HIGH school.

But on the flip side, there are plenty of CEOs with college degrees. General Electric's Jack Welch earned a masters and a Ph.D. before he turned GE into the world's most valuable company. And how about Sumner Redstone who flew through Harvard in 2 1/2 years before working his way to the top of Viacom - the company that controls CBS, Paramount, MTV, and Nickelodeon.

So what should you shoot for, book smarts or street smarts? Like the Game of Life, there's no easy answer. But the smart bet is to try to get both.