My wife is an economist and one of her biggest pet peeves is that the idea that a child "must" get a college education has had a dramatic impact on how we perceive trade school or apprenticeship educations.
Certainly, and some people would be better served by not going to college. The point is that you can't just call it a life after high school and expect to earn a respectable (in a financial sense) income. Unskilled union mill work is no longer going to feed a family of 5 and pay for a nice mortgage.
Unskilled, no, but the trades pay reasonably well. By the time you graduate from college you could have been a licensed electrician, for example. And if you were willing to go into enough debt to pay for a four year degree you could start your own business.
Not everybody needs college.