Interesting thread.
Here's food for thought...
Some of the most "intelligent" people i have ever met are in the building trades.
You meet a lot of older guys who run steel fabrication companies, or electricians, or formers who are beyond intelligent. Some of these guys could easily EASILY obtain doctorates if they went to university.
They tend to be older, usually immigrants from Eastern Europe, Italy, Austria. They didn't have the oportunity to go to school, but they give off intelligence. You can not pull the wool over their eyes, and you would be amazed at some of the conversations that go on.
If you think it's easy to build a 40 storey building guess again. It's a challange. Look around this city at its wonders. It wasn't built by fools.
Canada is the land of the tradesmen. These guys are all well known, and command excellent money, and respect. They are perhaps a dying breed, i dunno. Their kids for the most part tend to be good for nothings driving around in their accuras, or jeeps but the old man is still driving a K car.
I have a friend who is a high school teacher and she recognises university calibre students and those who frankly don't really have what it takes. When she tries to point out that there are lots of great opportunities in the trades the kids all snicker at her like they MUST go to univesity and she is just trying to keep them down or something. They find the idea of being a tradesmen somewhere between the dishwater and trash.
It's funny because I know in working with tradesmen that if they are good, they will always have work, have a skill they can sell, and can make more money than your average university educated "professional" including doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers et al.
Yes the top professionals are all degreed and make far more money than any tradesman, but the vast majority of degreed people are middle class humps.
In some ways, i would arugue that university teaches you to be the ideal employee / taxpayer. That the entrepreneurial spirit is quashed by the notion of "a good job" at the end of the day. I.e. working for someone else, being their slave.
I would always encourage my kids to keep going to school because it is a good thing. Education will never ever hurt you.
But i don't look down my nose at someone who doesn't have a degree.
Sometimes lack of education combined with desparation and a desire to make good makes for unique possibilities.