I've become so cynical that I'm to the point of wanting to discourage my kids from attending Universities and instead go to tech schools, learn a trade or marketable skill and start their own businesses....
It used to be that a lot of people coming out of high school wanted to work for the Big Corporations as a status/upward mobility thing, I, and I'm guessing a lot of others, are at the point that they see big corporations as fascist organizations that push their own social/economic/progressive/globalist agenda that fall well outside of what are the majority values of a representative republic.
The deal wife and I are contemplating with our kiddos:
1. Pay for training in a trade or cert or whatnot after HS.
2. If they want college after that (in a remunerative course of study), help them as they also work their trade to help themselves.
3. If they are happy without college, capital investment in their business when they decide to strike out on their own.
The objective being their independence rather than a credential.
All this after some serious talk, which began as soon as they were able to understand it, about how your training/education will have a great impact on where and how you live. Want to live in BFE on land with critters in a rural setting? A bachelors in electrical engineering is less likely to find you there than, say, something leading to an independent business.
I have known plenty of folk who managed to make it this way. And a couple were good friends who were mechanics while getting engineering degrees.