I'm not surprised at all - people with degrees try to find reasons to think they're better then the rest.
1. Many trades also are your own business, and can immediately scale for income - many plumbers, electricians, etc are millionaires with a small team of employees less than 15.
2. Google offers free marketing certification for this reason as well, it's not impossible for marketing/seo people to make 100k annually. It's very, very common.
3. Many colleges are not worth it and is debt- look at most state schools and you'd see a semester costs minimum $45,000. Yes there's community colleges.
4. Even community colleges require loans, and have programs of financial aid that is really "apply for fafsa, apply for stanford loans and then have pipelines for private debt.
You're way off on 3. You're saying that tuition alone at a state school costs $45k per semester, which would be $90k per year. This site says that the average in-state public school is ~$25k all-in for a year. That includes tuition, room and board, books and transportation.
You literally said "look at most state schools." How can most state schools have a cost that is higher than the average. Also, even your own case proved it. These schools are charging 56k or 34k respectively for 2 semesters. Therefore, a single semester would be 28k or 17k. Far from the 45k you allege in the original post.
Did you misread your own cite? UCLA is $36k for 9 months for in-state students, not $56k. Ohio is $24k for in-state. Anyone looking at these schools out of state is either not paying full price, due to scholarships or other aid, or is not worried about how to pay for it (bank of mom and dad).
Apparently lots of places, since the national average is substantially lower than the Ohio numbers.
But, more importantly, both UCLA and Ohio University are flagship R1s. Likely literally every other public university in Ohio is cheaper than OU, and I'd be unsurprised if UCLA is one of the more expensive public options in CA (wouldn't know, never lived in CA).
e: sure enough, the total cost at Youngstown State is 22K (tuition 10K, the rest is food and housing).
As an aside, including room and board in college prices always struck me as a bit odd (except in cases where living in a dorm is required, I guess, but that's somewhat rare). Do non-college-students not eat/drink/sleep?
Colleges/Universities and expensive enough and screwed up enough that exaggeration isn't necessary.
1. Many trades also are your own business, and can immediately scale for income - many plumbers, electricians, etc are millionaires with a small team of employees less than 15.
2. Google offers free marketing certification for this reason as well, it's not impossible for marketing/seo people to make 100k annually. It's very, very common.
3. Many colleges are not worth it and is debt- look at most state schools and you'd see a semester costs minimum $45,000. Yes there's community colleges.
4. Even community colleges require loans, and have programs of financial aid that is really "apply for fafsa, apply for stanford loans and then have pipelines for private debt.