In many cases these “alternative” career options are not as appealing as they seem. Many of these careers do require training of some sort and the people who are looking for high paying alternative careers tend to hate the need for additional training—of any kind. They also often find that the requisite training is “harder than I thought it was going to be.”
Many of these alternative jobs are not as portable as one may like. Once you have the job, you are pretty much stuck; you can’t easily pick up and move to a new state to, for example, escape cold weather, be closer to relatives, or otherwise live the glamorous life in San Diego. And you often hit a professional ceiling rather quickly and realize there is no where else to go.
Finally, many of these jobs pay relatively well, because they are jobs that no one really wants to do. Yahoo managed to put together some attractive job titles (Paralegal, Police Officer, Interior Designer), but I think they are sugar coating the reality. Does anyone really aspire to be a Respiratory Therapist? In some markets garbage men make good money, but is riding on the back of a garbage truck how you want to spend the next 20 years? Given all you now know, would you steer your child into one of these professions or would you encourage him or her to increase their professional options by getting a degree and relevant experience?
We would all like to “fuck around for a lot of years” and then waltz right into a job as a studio executive in the film industry, unfortunately, that’s not the way the real world works.