Yes, there are many trades which provide a living - but they are not aviation. Okay, if you want to pilot an airbus and nothing else will do, and it turns out you can't get an airbus captain job, then being a bricklayer, electrician, paramedic, etc will put bread on the table. But if you are in love with aviation in general, rather than just Airbus captaincy, you probably won't be happy being a sparky, but you may be more happy doing something in aviation engineering rather than being outside the industry completely doing a job that you don't find interesting just to put bread on the table. Or alternatively, if you really, really want to be an airbus captain, then maybe anything else in aviation just won't do, and you would be happier outside the industry completely. Everyone is different. There are always tradeoffs. I agree a degree is horrendeously expensive these days, but many jobs are inaccesible without a degree. But taking a degree is a diversion away from the most direct route to that left hand seat. One only really finds out if one has made good choices in life, with the benefit of hindsight and then it turns out to be too late.