Skill is good and educational certificate is also good. Having any of them can actually put food on your table, but the question is which of them will you let go for the other. I mean education can get you a white collar job the same way a skill can too. For me i will let go of the skill because skill without basic education is not good at all. Because I have seen a situation whereby a guy with good skill who got a job was unable to give quotation and he lost the job .Formal education is good for everyone.
formal education is good but in most cases the one to chose between the both is not in your will power but base on circumstances. for example you might grow up in a poor family where there is no opportunity to enroll into a formal education simply because of no money to afford it, but you may have the opportunity to learn skill that will help you to succeed in the future. all i can say is that in a place where you have the opportunity to do both, you can do. but in a situation when you are given option to chose, then you can go for the skill. in as much as you saw a situation where a skilled person could not get a good job because of not being able to give a good quotation, does not mean that it is always like that for all skilled persons. that is just a mistake by that guy maybe he was not smart enough if not majority of wealthy people i know today are skilled persons and not educated people. in the society today you need skill to survive and not certificate. certificate is just the product of what you learnt, why the skill is what you can offer. so go for the skill.