Salary potential - trades vs degrees

Like most of this sub, I grew up getting indoctrinated that going to college was a must, anything else was unthinkable, my whole life pre college felt like build up to college, and then during I obsessed over grades and burnt myself out doing the best I could bc I thought it was the key to a good living.

I majored in econ and I work at a bank. I’m pretty comfy can afford rent and stuff and am trying to save up for a house although that will probably take a while.

Well I was thinking I made p good choices and got lucky, but then I talked to a person who works in the trades. This person was very honest and gave a lot of details on the pros/cons in working in them, and he wasn’t really trying to sell me, just facts.

Apparently, you can work 4 years as an apprentice tradesman and make 200k/year.

$200,000 USD a year 😳 for 4 years of apprenticeship plus maybe another 1y as a “laborer” to get an apprenticeship.

Now I’ve heard trade bros a lot on here saying it’s better than a degree, but this claim was hard for me to believe, so I did some research annnnd it checks out.

To put it in perspective, the highest paid undergrad majors at entry level will pay 70-90k and that’s for like 3 majors (CS engineering and one other I forget); the rest of us are lucky to break 50k for an entry level position (at least for the class of 21).

So coming back to my original question: are we just insanely naive and the trade bros are right? From a purely financial perspective, it does seem to be superior at this time to degrees. At the very least, it seems to suggest that less ppl should be coming to college and more should be going into trades.

Like I said im a college grad and not trying to sell anyone, im just wondering what others think and if this makes you want to reconsider at all? Personally, I am annoyed at how under advertised salary info in general is.

Tldr given that 4 years in a trade seems to massively outearn 4y in school, is college really still as good an investment as we think?