I will tell you why I was raised to believe a college education was so important. My brother and I [both of us now right around 50 yo] were the first to attend college in my family. Our grandparents came off the boat from Eastern Europe at the turn of the century, they worked in the steel mills and coal mines in southwestern PA. My grandmothers cleaned houses for a living and they helped my parents pay for my brother and I to go to college. It was the American dream to have your kids and grandkids be better educated and to do better in life than you and your parents. They wanted you to do a job that didn’t entail “getting dirty”. My brother would have been perfectly happy being a motorcycle mechanic, but that wasn’t an option in our house. it was college, PERIOD. he is a very successful petroleum engineer now. I graduated from college and went to law school.
Doctor, lawyer, clergy, teacher, of these clergy was the main and earliest of those needing university education and clergy also furnished much of the legal expertise. Now we have engineer and scientist that need extensive and intensive training and credentials. College grad isn’t worth so much relatively anymore, but grad school still has something going especially when it provides a professional sheepskin for the office wall. For financial success there is little to compare with some trade unions, and for that the college route might be ruled out altogether. It’s a different game even compared with 1/4 century ago.