I started off in trades, after 10 years I was able to pay my way through engineering. Afterwards, it took me about 5 years of work to hit the break even point.

As far as trades, the only way I could make more was run faster or hire more people, hiring more people would have had me competing with major contractors.

People would generally better served by learning a trade after high school to really know if they want to go back to school, or to be exposed to other trades and get a feel for what interests them... it's respectful money.

The thing is, the education should NOT cost anywhere near what it does, that's really a part of the student loans artificially inflating tuition and loan values, all backed by government and a signature.