It's not even that college isn't for everyone because there's jobs like plumbing for which you don't need a bachelor's degree for work, or to obtain the job.
It's that there's jobs like credit analyst which require a degree to obtain, which absolutely, do not, at all, require a degree.
It's mostly the latter that is so insane to me, and the solution isn't for kids to recognise they don't need the degree. Because if employers ask for one, even though it's stupid, they have little choice but to accept the system. (and no, not everyone can just start their own company and beat the system).
I have friends who have credit analyst jobs, they're literally on the phone contacting clients to pay back their debt if they forgot, and propose a payback plan if they have issues paying. That's about it. The title is one where you expect an undergrad degree and employers require one most of the time, but by age 16 most people have the competencies, safe for the deep voice and calm professional phone demeanour, to do this job.
And that scares me most. These degrees cost $30-50k, and they're useless, yet required. That really has to change.
The key point is this:
A degree should be a proxy for competence and skills particular to the job. i.e. you studied marketing, so let's hire you for a marketing job because you've got the skills.
But what a degree really is to employers, is a proxy for ambition, young-urban-professional normalcy, perhaps some level of a proxy for ethnicity or at least congeniality (oh, this employee will be like me, has a wife, kids, normal life, is dependable, not volatile etc), a proxy for a person valuing the long-term etc. i.e., oh you studied marketing, let's hire you for an unrelated job requiring no skills, because this degree is an easy first-order way to filter out the type of people we don't want to hire.
And that's bs, because it treats education as a giant money-wasting institution for employers to weed out those who aren't keen on following the system, or who see through it. That's NOT what education should be about and it's a travesty. Almost all my peers who went to uni didn't give a rats ass about learning as part of their formal uni education, it was simply not a part of their decision making process for university. Despite that, they're all curious, interesting individuals, who learn in their own time about their particular interests. That's really sad.
And that concerns me. Students choosing to pursue a skilled career over plumbing is another concern, but not nearly as significant for me (and in some cases not a concern at all).