I am a graduate of a small high school in South Carolina and I am ten weeks from my seventy fifth birthday. I joined the Navy straight out of high school and spent ten months out of three years of active duty going to a free electronics school which actually paid me a small salary along with furnishing food, clothing and shelter. I have no other formal education but I have had steady work until about a year ago when I had to sit down due to declining health. I’m not rich but I own house, vehicles etc debt free and my wife and I are not in danger of starving at this point. Judging from what I see around me very few if any of those who are receiving college degrees now could actually pass my EIGHTH grade final exam in English or History and probably a couple of other subjects. I am definitely not joking, I’m dead serious.
As far as starting pay after military service at age 23 I was working in a manufacturing engineering department of a bearing factory, driving a new Mustang and renting a three bedroom brick house. I was earning one hundred and ten dollars a week at a time when that new Mustang cost three thousand and the brick house rented for seventy dollars a MONTH! How many recent college graduates are doing that well now?