<p>I'll give you an example - become a certified Information Technology (IT) guy, i.e. a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE), Oracle Certified Professional (OCP), or so forth. CCIE's get paid an average of around $98k a year, with the very best making up to $150k+. Now, granted, you need significant experience to make it to that level, but it is entirely reasonable for a new CCIE with no experience to make, say, $50k a year and then work up from there.</p>
<p>The beautiful thing about IT work is that not only do you not need a related college degree or even any college degree at all, heck, you don't even really need to graduate from high school. Take the CCIE for an example. I am convinced that a dedicated person of reasonable intelligence could become a CCIE in just 3-6 months of work (that is, 3-6 months of doing nothing else but reading, learning how to use the gear, and then practicing for the certification exam). All you need is to get yourself a rack of Cisco routers and switches (for no more than $10k on Ebay), get a bunch of books starting with the basic ones like "Teach yourself Cisco Routers in 21 days" and then working your way up, and maybe another $3-5k in test fees, as you'll probably fail the certification exam the first few times, but that's OK as you can just take it over and over again until you finally pass. Even the $10k in equipment is not something that you're really "paying", because after you complete the certification, you can just sell the gear right back on Ebay and get most of your money back. In any case, the costs are clearly far lower than the tuition of most colleges. </p>
<p>I know a couple of IT guys who had dropped out of high school and are now making 6 figure salaries. Granted, they obviously didn't make that kind of money immediately - it took them years to make it to that level. But, since they never spent time in college (or even finishing high school), they had those extra years with which to build their experience. I remember them laughing at all of the "stupid" college graduates who end up with rinky-dink little jobs that pay less than half of what these guys are making now. To this day, I still don't have a good comeback to use against them. In fact, I have to agree with them that if you're just going to graduate from college without marketable skills and just and wind up with a $30-35k job that has no serious potential for career development, then you clearly would have been better off, at least financially, in never going to college at all and instead learned IT skills.</p>
<p>{I think the real problem is with colleges and high schools themselves. Not only do they largely do not teach marketable skills, they don't even make students aware of what these skills might be. For example, even most CS graduates from even the top programs do not know what a Cisco router even looks like, much less how to use one. It's not that hard to learn. But the schools won't teach you this. In short, the schools don't even bother teaching students that this kind of career is even available, and that's sad, for I think most college students are just looking to get some marketable skills.}</p>