Watching The Apprentice, I've started wondering which may be more important - not only to employers - but also in life.

Experience allows you to get to a sense of the working world and working conditions which make it easier to adjust to a new job or changes in the workplace, whereas a student is thrown right into the future. There is also the money issue. In the amount of time you spend in school (4 years let's say) you may have already accumulated a high-ranking position in an office as well as a reasonable chunk of change. These days it is not too hard to move up from the mail room to the office just by having reasonable computing skills, and you can accomplish all of this without getting yourself in a ton of debt.

Education on the other hand minimizes the risk. If you have a bachelor's or master's degree the chances of you landing that office job increase drastically. Although you may not know the way the office operates, you know how to do everything else. However the problem with education also depends on the field of study you choose. Even people who get a lot of schooling may not attain their dream job because their dream job is in an industry that has little work. Education definitely minimizes the risk associated with a job, but it clearly is not required to get a top paying job.

Although the easy choice is to say you need a combination of both, the more valuable one to employers and for life is experience. In the office you can pick up the same things you could otherwise learn in school. There are many classes I've noticed that overlap or you realize are altogether unnecessary for your desired field of work.

Experience>Education