You are right on the money there.
You may disagree with me--in fact, I'm fairly sure you will--but so many posters on the "college worthiness" threads fail to understand that employers are looking for people capable of being trained and among the populations they are considering are those who have graduated from college and are perceived to have the intelligence to be trainable. They have other qualities, of course, to include a substantial familiarity with the English language, and by graduating have demonstrated that they stick to the task at hand over long periods of time.
But so many FReepers worship at the foot of the great god ENGINEERING and exclude these possibilities. That is narrow-mindedness in all its glory.
Years ago I worked at a medium sized Machine shop. Every year we would hire 5-7 "Engineers" and end up keeping 1 maybe 2. After numerous complaints from the people on the floor the company began a program. Each of these young men or women would about 8 weeks working with a senior person on the floor. This meant they spent about 4 months learning the ropes. The head engineer was very good and if we told him that one of his hires was not cutting the mustard they were gone at the end of the day.
The shortest time we had someone was about 4 hours. I sent him to the store room for some 2" 1/4 20's. He came back after 1/2 hour and asked 1/4 20 what? I went right to the head Engineers office.