Trade school and college are both real education. The best path is the one where you’ll actually learn.

The two get ranked against each other as though one were serious and the other a fallback, which has very little to do with how much anybody actually learns in either. What matters is whether the thing you are studying holds your attention well enough that you turn up, work, and get genuinely good. A route that suits you produces a skilled person; the prestige of the other route produces nothing on its own.

Rather than asking which path is better, ask where you learn well and what you want to be able to do. Talk to somebody a few years into each.