Maybe, but the road from high school dropout to NASA JPL seems a bit more tenuous when you don't include an education.

bls.gov tells a more complete story, in that machine operators make significantly less and job openings grow at a significantly lower rate than software, aerospace, robotics, and AI specialists, many of which require a degree, (and the siccessful outliers are not worth pushing as a good model for the 90%)

I can't say there wasn't a different, even a better road to some measure of success and an enjoyable career, but I can say this path was a miracle of positive life changes for me and every penny of debt I pay back to the fed is absolutely a victory lap.

This is a looking vs. leaping exercise. Do you continue "looking" around for 10 years or do you "leap" at an opportunity to make a change?

While I see your point - a whole lot of people do have salary increases over a 10 year span - a whole lot of jobs people want require "X piece of paper for Y years of experience" and you cannot get that experience to begin with without either 1) the piece of paper or 2) knowing someone.