speaking from personal experience, i do NOT recommend becoming a tech in lieu of college. let me elaborate to perhaps help you in a critical decision (long read).

for one, tools are fucking expensive, and you need them to work. next, unless you work for a dealership and/or have extensive experience, you will not make shit for money (note- you need experience to make money as a tech, no way around it). i actually had a really good opportunity after fucking up in college for two years- i got hired at a dealership as a lube tech. definitely not a glorious position, but it got my foot in the door. changed oil and rotated tires for a year, got moved up to apprentice. it was fun for about 8 or 9 months as i was learning, but then i hit a plateau. i was making a shitball 350 a week, was at the point where i knew about everything i could know without going to classes or busting ass studying on my own, and would need to really invest (when i say invest, i mean $5k AT LEAST, that's alot of money @ 350/wk) in tools if i wanted to get off on my own. it did not take long before i got really burnt out on working on cars. and even had i decided to take the leap and buy tools and get off working on my own as a line tech, i would have made a measley 13 bucks an hour and got all the shit work as a new tech (you'll notice that places that offer 13 an hour usually have master techs they give all the good work to) which would equate to about 15-25 hours a week, MAYBE 40 if i got luck and busted my ass. still completely shit money that you cannot live comfortably off of.

and then even as a line tech at 13 a commissioned hour, you hit another glass ceiling with training. first you have to work at a respectable enough establishment that believes in properly training its workforce- and let me tell you that in the auto repair industry those are few and far between. then you have to convince them that you are trainable. then you have to pass the tests (if you're really motivated you can attempt to take the tests without attending the classes, but then again why not just go to college?). granted, if you can get far enough to become master ase certified you could potentially make good money, it still isn't good enough to write home about until you've got a good 15-20 years experience under your belt, or you're just a shit hot tech that is just naturally good at diagnostics and extremely gifted with manual dexterity to get shit done faster than anyone else. i won't lie, some of the guys at the dealership i was working at made in excess of 60-80k a year as techs... but they each had at least 20 years experience and master certs working for them.

you want a good alternative to college that can really benefit you in the long run? look into joining the military. seriously. but that's another topic entirely...