Bullshit.
You can still have a high school education, go to one of the many union based factories in the country make a very livable wage to support a family, but, but...YOU WILL HAVE TO WORK FOR A LIVING. YOU WILL HAVE TO PASS A DRUG TEST. YOU WILL HAVE TO WAKE UP WELL BEFORE THE CRACK OF DAWN AND WORK 12 HOURS A DAY.
Doesn't college sound so much easier? I can continue to wake up 4 hours after the sun comes up and go to class in my pajamas. I see this everyday as a 35 year old college student who worked his ass off after flunking through school the first year after high school, had to go out and get a job that made me work for a living in order to play the bills in order to SURVIVE. I learned a lot in those years. I learned that there are plenty of paths I could take in college in order to to actually get a return on my investment. I failed to mention, I have not borrowed ONE DIME for my college education. My parents WERE FAR FROM middle-class and I was able to receive FASFA for my college education. When I flunked out, I worked for the nest 10 years. Jobs like Heating&Air, crawling up under houses on my belly within a 16" space and going home at the end of a long day with dirt across in every place you can imagine. I only made $8/hour. I then moved on to Surveying that paid the same amount but this time I got to work in the outdoors for 10 hours a day being consumed by sunburn, tick bites, and snakes at every turn. I learned through my experience I could go to school and within 2 years I could become a CAD Designer, all the while continuing to let the Fed pay for my school through FASFA. I worked full time, went to school at night, made the deans list and became eligible for more educational grants that not only covered my classes and books, but also put about $1k in my pocket every semester
The thing is, many choose the path of "enlightenment" with a post-secondary education right out of high school, which is great, yet so many have wasted the investment of higher-education with paths that do not return on the investment that they made into it. THEY ALL KNEW THIS BY THEIR 2ND YEAR, THEY KNEW THAT THE $60k they have invested in their education