My take on this is degrees are over rated in many cases and have no bearing on job skills. .
Agreed. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-college at all. I sent my daughter to college and she got a degree that did very well for her up to the time when she became a stay at home mom. My son-in-law has also done very well with his degree.
But it seems that an awful lot of people have college degrees nowadays that are no good for anything but looking pretty hanging on the wall. College has become a business that is designed to take people's money and run them through the building. This has been perpetuated by the mindset of the public school system and supported by programs such as Hope Scholarship. And a lot of the degrees that are being handed out are almost worthless in today's job market.
I know a lot of young people with college degrees and huge student loans who are waiting tables, keeping kids, etc. Honorable work, but not what they paid $100,000 for. And the kind of jobs they are finding usually doesn't have the income potential to pay these student loans back. There is likely a "crash" coming involving student loans.
All this while the market is starving for experienced and qualified tradesmen. Plumbers, electricians, HVAC techs, mechanics, etc. High schools need to put shop classes back in and begin to teach kids how to do these trades. Not everyone is meant for college, and it's not uncommon today for skilled tradesmen to make much better money than college grads.
The other downside of the "gotta have college" mindset is that many of the trades are under-respected and underpaid. My state licenses are called professional licenses, and for a good reason. But the way the trades are structured and the lack of qualified techs have caused today's society to look down on them as blue collar jobs, and that is unfortunate.
Our entire job market is kind of out of whack.