Your point about pursuing a trade or other technical is good, but I think you're giving not enough credit to normal colleges.

Elon musk has an arts degree. I'm not using his name as some sort of "he's a genius". I'm just letting you know that his degree is highly technical, but it's also an arts degree and not a science degree. Technically it has a lot of science base.

When I went to school I got all the way to my last 12 credit hours and I had a choice between chemistry and political science. I chose political science as a bachelor of science degree. I can go to any other school I want to and do a single year come out with a chemistry degree.

A lot of college is what you make it and you can take your core credits any way you want. If you choose to do what I did and take most of your core credits in physics and calculus, then you can come out of it with a very strong basis for a stem degree. If however, you choose to go in and do most of your core credits in literature and history then yeah you're going to have a hard time transitioning to stem after that.