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There’s a sort of mythology haunting our educational system.

It’s a two-fold myth: First is the assumption that just about every high-school graduate should go on to college. Second is the assumption that students who do go to college shouldn’t have to work to pay for their educations.

It’s quite true that most college graduates get better jobs and earn more than many youngsters who don’t acquire a college degree. But that doesn’t mean that every high-schooler should automatically move on to college.

We have plenty of business administrators and social workers, lots of young men and women with degrees in English literature and American history, a plethora of bureaucrats and far too many lawyers and politicians.

What we need are more and better carpenters, electricians and plumbers. You can make a very good living at these crafts. In fact, I have many friends who are writers, yet moan that if they’d been really smart they’d have become plumbers instead. The money is better. And steadier.

Besides, there are no critics of plumbing. Nobody comes in after a plumber’s finished his work and sniffs, “That’s a pretty good T-joint, but he’s done better in the past. He’s not the plumber he used to be.”

And having a degree is no guarantee of success. I’ve seen plenty of bright young men and women barely eking out a living as editors in major publishing houses. And many’s the author who has been forced to take on a “day job” to keep body and soul together.

The idea that everyone should get a college degree is, in part, a hangover from the Great Depression of the 1930s, when people were desperately trying to keep youngsters out of the job market, where they would be competing for scarce jobs against men who had families to support.

It has also led to a kind of intellectual snobbery. People tend to think that a college graduate is a better person than someone who hasn’t obtained a college degree.

Worse still, the educational establishment eventually tumbled to the fact that getting lots of young men and women to go to college is good for their business. When World II ended and a horde of returning servicemen entered college on the GI Bill, at first professors and college administrators panicked. They didn’t want these uncouth commoners piling into their classrooms!

I was in college at the time and saw the terror among the professors as battle-hardened ex-GIs asked questions and raised doubts about the professors’ understanding of the real world outside the ivied walls of academia.

Slowly the educators began to realize that more students meant more money for the colleges, their faculties and their staffs. Higher education became a major industry, and the educational establishment began to welcome all the customers they can get. College tuitions have risen enormously since the end of World War II — and are still rising.

Frankly, I think a capable craftsman is as good as any college grad. And more valuable to the community than most. And if they truly want an academic education, they can always go to college later in life.

Then there’s this notion that students shouldn’t have to work to earn the money that pays for their college education. This attitude is based on the idea that students who aren’t burdened with jobs will do better in their classes than those who have to spend much of their time working.

I think that notion is true, but it doesn’t mean that every student should have his or her expenses paid all the way through college. Frankly, not every student who coasts through college without working at an outside job does all that well. You get out of your education what you put into it.

I had to work my way through college. While attending classes in journalism I worked as a copyboy at the Philadelphia Inquirer, the city’s morning daily newspaper. The difference between what was being taught in the classroom and what was going on in the newsroom was very, very educational.

I lived in my parents’ house, so room and board was provided for me. (Thanks, Mom and Dad!) But I didn’t have much of a social life. I worked from 6 p.m. to 3 a.m. five nights a week and attended regular daytime classes. I often fell asleep on city buses.

But I got my degree and went on to a regular job as a reporter/editor on a suburban weekly newspaper.

That was half a century ago, and I know that times have changed. But a generation later, when our son went to college, he worked to earn his tuition. When he went on to graduate school, he worked as a teaching assistant to pay for his education. Today he’s a Ph.D. biologist and a doctor of law, as well. He works at the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Md.

He didn’t have much of a social life, either, I guess. But now he’s living in the District of Columbia, married and raising a teenage daughter.

I have the strong impression that youngsters who have to work for their educations value their degrees more highly than those who party their way through college. They tend to feel that they earned their education: it wasn’t an entitlement or a gift.

There’s nothing second-class about being a good, competent craftsman. Nor will it ruin a youngster to work for his or her college degree. It cuts into the fun, but, as John Wayne would put it, “It gets the job done.”

It might be wonderful if every youngster went to college and had all the bills paid by family or government. But not everyone should be an English major, and those who earn their own way through life are valuable citizens indeed.

Naples resident Ben Bova is the author of nearly 120 books, including “Mars Life,” his latest futuristic novel. Bova’s Web site address is www.benbova.com.