I thought about that too when I was looking for an out. Not having a degree myself made that difficult, but a good friend of mine recently lucked out. He has a Masters (in Voice Performance, go figure) and recently took a few graduate courses in CS at Columbia, and managed to make an impression on his teachers. Mostly because he is both really smart, a really good coder, and he was the only one in his class who included a full test suite will all his assignments. Before the semester was up, he was offered a position as a research assistant, and is now going to get his PhD pretty much for free. The key to this whole thing was being both in the right place at the right time, but also sticking out as being smart and talented.

Of course any economist would point out that his PhD isn't free, its cost is his opportunity cost for whatever else he could have done in that time.

Working at a University might be a refreshing change of pace.