For many jobs, you really don’t need a degree. Programming, graphic design,lots of tech jobs that pay well never use theory and practice learned at university.
US high schools push kids into college so they’ll go into debt for the next 10 years to pay to have social engineering garbage force fed to them for 4 to 5 years. This is because they were trained in communist overrun teacher colleges.
Most colleges and universities are no more than communist brainwashing factories that make debt slaves of their students via student loans.
I”m sure there are jobs to be had without a degree, but guess what? His or her boss has a degree - so if they want to climb the ladder, they will need a degree. I”m sorry that most places don’t put more stock in experience and job knowledge, but they don’t - they want that piece of paper.