No need. There are plenty of 2 year schools out there where kids can get very good training for work within two years of HS. THEN if they still want a formal education, they can pursue it part time with... the money THEY earn!!!
The very best advice a kid can get right now is go to a Tech school or other 2 year program first.
Best policy states and feds could follow would be to reroute the funds going into grants and diversity / gender / sandbox programs and put it into two year schools and technical skills.
By technical skills I mean the ability to apply specialty tools and materials to create or repair things plus a working knowledge of the science behind those things. The ability to do useful (shop) math with a pencil and paper should be mandatory.
If the student really likes the field or wants to advance in that or another field then a four year school can provide the ability to understand the math behind what their computer does for them and the social skills needed to perform in a group.
I really believe that some amount of philosophy, history, critical thought, English language, etc. should be required of any advanced education...I really grew tired of "scientists" who could neither spell nor recognize the worth of other disciplines.
That really depends on the kid.
But a lot of the salary correlation simply has to do with the caliber of student: physics majors tend to be very smart, history majors quite smart, education majors not so much, etc..
Yes, the engineering and accounting degrees, for example, add vocational value atop the student’s intrinsic value, but high quality students don’t necessarily need that.