College is a business. The college industry misreads the stats that people with a college degree do better than those who do not have a college degree. They purposely don’t look into whether college degrees are causation or correlation with regard to success. In my experience, college acceptance has virtually the same correlation with success as college graduation. And college has very little if any causation for success. Actual, going through college gives you little in terms of knowledge that you can’t get anywhere else (internet, on the job, random observance). And the networking you do is easily done at your first job, or a city apartment complex, or a work out room.
As an employer I did not care what someones degree was in. I only cared which college they were accepted to. It was an IQ test. University of Chicago meant you were smarter than Michigan State. Programmers were the only position that I required a degree in the subject. (Obviously CFOs and lawyers need a specific degree.)
The new college student has to unlearn much of college. Gone are the days where you are taught. You need to learn to be successful. Gone are the days when you are supposed to do your own work. Collaboration is the key to success. Risking, getting something pretty close to right, invention and throwing out what you worked on to throw in with a colleague who has a better idea is part of work and scorned by colleges.
Your kids, especially with wives who help out, are probably great. Especially if they are industrious and have an industrious partner.
You make a good point in your last line (actually in the others too). My son who dropped out in the 10th grade is happily married to a college graduate who is working in a biomedical field. My son who went straight into the Army is married to a woman who graduated from a well recognized arts school, and got an MA in a specialized area of art. She earns good money and they are working on getting a building that she can use both as a studio and store. In the Army my son has gone through a number of trainings which he figures will be useful for getting post Army work.
I had read Trump’s book 30 years ago and my net worth is probably double what it would have been if I had not read it. I used an equity line of credit to gift my boys enough money to each buy a fixer upper house with room enough to have some kids. Without that help I might still have only one grandchild instead of 4. When I discovered the Starker exchange, I used it to trade an inherited property 1,000 miles from home for a desirable vacation property 120 miles from home. My sons have sought my advice on things like home buying and HELOCs which has advanced their lives too. Parents with enough education or intelligence need to recognize that roads to success today may not be the same as they were 30 or 40 years ago, and that they can help their kids by learning about new employable skills. Also, they say many people will do at least 3 types of work in their lifetime as things are these days.