Hitmen and blackmarket organ donors
The low end of professional syndicated cartooning requires absolutely no formal training whatsoever and can still earn the artist a high five or low six figure annual salary (I think the rock bottom minimum is something like 30,000). If they can get their work successfully merchandised into animated or live action series, books, toys and lunchboxes? Potentially millions per year, or like Jim Davis and Charles Schulz, potentially a million per month.
Maybe you should have included lack of skill as well as lack of education?
As has been posted, professional athletes can earn huge sums of money with no formal education - but with natural ability and lots of practice in their sport.
Many sales jobs don’t require higher education. Can you sell? You’re hired! I know guys making $250k a year with only a high school education. Real Estate, computers, xerox machines, etc.
-Tcat
Porno actresses make $1000 a day or more with minimal education or training.
But possibly a whole lot of on the job training. 
Oh, they get an ass load of on-the-job training.
Musical composers earn “grand rights” whenever their music is played. These are nonnegotiable and nontransferable. They are yours and yours alone until you die.
You can be a high school dropout, and if you score a successful musical that plays all over the world, you will make millions.
Chairman of Microsoft, Inc. Not even a college degree, but pretty good money.
Well, he did go to college. I’m not sure how much of that education went towards his success with Microsoft though.
That said, I do recall a magazine with him on the cover and the byline: “Most Successful College Dropout in History”
My husband took a two year course to become a CET (in mechanical engineering technology).
He gets paid very well and has a ton of job security. I would also suggest welding or another trade, they are in short supply and heavily in demand.
Politicians don’t make that much money. It’s also pretty difficult to get elected to any office of significance without some sort of education. Would you vote for a high school graduate to run your state?
It’s actually harder than a job.
For highest potential money to education/trianing ratio, “Financial Analyst” (IOW, stockbroker) gets my vote. I interviewed at a number of “Boiler Room” type firms and they are pretty much just like that movie. They bring in a bunch of college grads who can talk a lot of shit as trainees. They put them on the phones working for a broker calling doctors and lawyers and housewives until they pass their Series 7. Once they bring in X number of clients, they’re own their own. After a year or so you’ll either be pulling in a couple hundred grand or (more likely) you will quit out of frustration or get shitcanned. It’s not like being an investment banker where you need the pedigree and the Wharton MBA.
Professional model/actor also has a high potential to earn big money without a formal education.
What about 2-year health related degrees like dental hygiene or x-ray technology? A quick google search tells me that a dental hygienist can make between $20 and $30 an hour. Plus apparently more than half work part-time. An X-ray tech seems to make about $20 an hour. There are some accelerated RN programs that can be completed in 2 years but that’s a lot of schooling packed into a short period of time.
absolutely a tech degree can get one started in an indemand career. Its up to the individual to take it to the upper echelons. A certificate get ones foot inthe door in allied health careers, foodie tech, Rx tech, essentially specialized service jobs for a livable wage.
Truck driving and offshore oil work. My BIL does both (drives a bigrig for a small company when he’s not in the oil patch).
Pro: Income well into the six figures
Con: He’s not home very much
Casino Dealer:
You can take a course that takes about 6 weeks, or teach yourself. If you can pass an audition, you can get hired.
I work in a low stakes State and full time dealers can make $50k a year easy. I made $36 last year and didn’t work for 4 months.
I throw little piece of plastic in the air, take an accurate rake and keep the assholes in line. I sit down in air conditioned comfort and get a 30 minute break every few hours. My shifts are either 6 hours or 12 hours. Uniforms are provided.
Hm, I don’t really have a job. Interesting. Here I’ve been working mornings, afternoons, and evenings, five to seven days a week; keeping old clients happy and cultivating new ones; paying expenses and taxes (15% Social Security compared to the 7.5% that wage slaves pay); keeping my computer maintained; reading trade publications; providing my own vacation pay, sick pay (I might add that when I “call in sick,” the work is still there the next day), and retirement fund (fortunately not my own health insurance anymore, although that may change in the near future); and teaching myself new skills and keeping up with old ones, all the while trying to stay caught up with my sleep and my eye-drop and aspirin supply. Oh, and the money I bring in pretty much supports this household.
Guess I’d better go get a real job, since this one doesn’t count. Turns out I’ve just been goofing off! (Oh, and I work at home too. Do I get extra slacker points?)
I can’t speak for the U.S., but if you get elected in the U.K., even at the local level, it’s an absolute gravy train if you want it to be.
Since prostitution has been mentioned, what about drug dealing? That’s a huge pyramid scheme and the ones at the top are making a bloody fortune.
Of course, pyramid schemes are illegal.
I have a BA. My line of work - pharmaceutical clinical research data management - pays quite well. I suspect one reason it pays so well is because hardly anybody knows the job even exists (until now!). I started in 1996 at $28.50/hr (after 6 years on the hospital end of clinical research) and interviewed recently for a consultant position at another company that paid $65/hr (out of which I’d have to pay my own benefits). It’s basically 9-5 plus some extra hours around major deadlines.
The big hazard is that off-shoring has worked so far up the food chain that my current job is history come December. The statistics & reporting programmers with Masters degrees are getting thrown out of work, too. Pretty scary.