I mean you’re looking at a few edge cases here. Most of us will tend to land in the average and never see that level of wild success. Yes, with the right skills you can get a well paying job without a degree but on the whole, people who get a higher education end up doing better financially.
Most of the most successful people never went to college. Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Simon Cowell…
I mean you’re looking at a few edge cases here. Most of us will tend to land in the average and never see that level of wild success. Yes, with the right skills you can get a well paying job without a degree but on the whole, people who get a higher education end up doing better financially.
https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2023/data-on-display/education-pays.htm
They either had rich parents with rich connections, or had incredibly loyal, highly skilled friends, like Jobs had Wozniak.
I wondered that too, but then you have people like Whoopi Goldberg and Chris Rock on that list. And it’s not like Will Smith was that rich friend.