Yes, it's difficult to get people who don't have a degree to take you on when they find out you have a degree. If you haven't been to university, I suppose it can feel like a graduate won't be able to learn a trade (though I think it's fair to say graduates are likely to be a nuisance to some people in that 'because I told you that's how it works' isn't a proper explanation to someone who has an academic background). Sounds like I had a similar office job a few years ago, so I get you.I think I was put on the track to chartership too early in my career and dropped out. Added to that, I've only done a bachelors degree and it's never been a viable option to do another year or two of study to get a masters, it seems to be a requirement for chartership but I never thought it would be worth the expenditure and stress.
Much of my frustration is with office staff that have never picked up tools and think they can control the world from a computer screen.
There's other things drawing me towards becoming a gas safe registered engineer, but any opportunity to escape office life has a lot of appeal.
Please do let me know how you get on. I'm considering doing something similar because I'm fed up with having customers wanting something relatively straightforward such as a boiler service and having to tell them there is not a gas-safe registered person I would actually be able to recommend. In fact I don't actually even have my own boiler serviced because there is no one I feel I can trust to do it and all they do is run a wire brush around it anyway.
There was someone I used to recommend, but after he did a boiler change for a friend of mine and I saw his "standard" of workmanship in detail, I no longer bother.