I pivoted into SWE a few years ago without a degree

Your self-disagreement, as manifested in your first two paragraphs, should be eating you alive, but it isn't because you haven't fully come to terms with it yet.

College degrees still make sense for things that involve math (like mechanical engineering or physics) because I have never met a single person who put the effort in to raise themselves to a professional level on their own.

Great colleges teach some people how to think. Most people cannot critically think, they simply parrot others, go with the herd, although some of those can perhaps communicate effectively. But for those that go to college and get some manner of STEM degree, something that requires analysis, these people can think from first principles. They are worth 10x what the others are at a technical company. Any college that manages to train students how to critically think is well worth the price. Our economy is quite literally held back by the fact that we do not have enough people who can actually think. Perhaps AI will help solve this problem, but so far, AI just seems to replicate the non-thinkers.

As a self-taught SWE myself, I agree with your observations. Two of the most talented engineers I've ever met were self-taught. The interesting thing about the two people I'm thinking of is that, besides being self-taught, neither one of them actually even went to college. One of them actually dropped out of college, then went on to get hired at Netflix at 23 years old, back when they were only hiring senior engineers. Me, I have a degree in math, but 97% of what I know is stuff I picked up either on the job, or because I found it interesting. Besides those that picked up CS as a major when it was a hot field, I'm betting that some of them get the love of tech beaten out of them by their college experience. I certainly know more than one science major who felt that way after graduating. (Not me, though. I'm weird, and I still love math just as much as I always did. Maybe even more.)