Really? Most of the people I went to college with and went into the line of work they degreed in are in dead end jobs that earn less than the couple of us who said the hell with what our degree says and went off and did our own things. In some cases they are making less than some plumbers and electricians I know. A friend of mine knows how to use heavy machinery. No college at all. He makes $100K+ a year.
This meme that college is the only way to succeed is an outdated relic from the Great Depression when you needed an edge. Now everyone and their brother has a degree. They are meaningless.
College is fine for some and we need some to go to college but it doesn’t mean squat if we can’t build anything for ourselves.
Both of my sisters went to college. One manages a billing call center the other is a photographer. I’m a high school drop out and I’m a photographer (among other things) and have always landed in management positions in factories. I’m not going to get rich but that sounds like a hassle to me anyway.
I am not saying that it is the be all end all. I am saying that it helps to vey in the door. If you have a trade that is great. Military is great. But not everyone can do either of those. To be blue collar, you need some abilities.
“A friend of mine knows how to use heavy machinery. No college at all. He makes $100K+ a year.”
You people who keep preaching on about trades (plumbing work and here, operating heavy machinery), you present one helluva an assumption, that the people you want to do this have mechanical ability. And damn it, not everyone does; I’d say few do. So, you’re trying to put the old square rod into the round hole. And they don’t always fit, folks!