You don't need a degree to get into IT. The stuff you learn in the first half of schooling is obsolete by the time you graduate. The textbooks themselves lag behind the industry by at least a year. A school isn't going to get you caught up on any particular language or field, but it will teach you how to wrap your brain around the abstract concepts that may be waiting for you. That is, school will teach you how to think like a programmer, or network administrator, or whatever.

But if you can get to that point without school, then you can get a job in the industry. Just go take the tests to get your certs once you've learned the material. For some fields (such as software engineer, i.e., programmer) you don't need a cert; you can just create a portfolio to show off your knowledge.