15 careers that pay well when you don’t have a four-year degree

The reigning assumption among many Americans is that teenagers go directly from high school to college, but that’s not the way life always works. Just 27 percent of Americans over age 25 hold Bachelor’s degrees or higher, according to 2004 census data. This has been in decline because of a new phenomenon in the job market.

“Increasingly, the days of blue-collar jobs that have lower educational and skill requirements but pay an outstanding wage are disappearing,” said Jerry Rubin, vice president of Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit research group that works with agencies to create job training programs.