My uncle started out running orders around fresh out of High School using a HANDTRUCK. He wound up with a seat on the exchange - no college.
"Gone are the days" is right. I think NYC is "gone" too.
Decades ago, lots of intelligent, ambitious people with no college degree, got good jobs that they would never be considered for today, without spending 4 years drinking beer and learning nothing of value, in order to fulfill the initiation rite of getting a white collar job.
I’ve said it a 100 times and I’ll say it again, The push to get every kid to go to college was to turn white collar workers into brown nosing, compliant, brainwashed, corporate cogs.
And as far as all those empty office buildings..... that’s part of the plan. The digital world enables the ruling class to have complete control over us. “Work from home” is just another form of Globalist slavery. The internet, cell phones, social media, etc, create the illusion that we are more connected to people, when we are actually more isolated, and more surveilled.
He took and passed the entrance exam for Harvard's MBA program, did well, went on to get a PhD and worked internationally before he got a job as a business professor and retired as a college dean.
Family reunions were always a treat when someone would ask him something and he would deadpan "How do you expect me to know, I was a high school dropout."
Try doing that today.