I encountered a very moving answer on the net last week, it stuck with me, and I now wish I'd saved it. It was written by a university graduate, a lady, if I am not mistaken, who had graduated a decade ago and made the pitiable case that (to paraphrase and embellish):
“We were just following the advice of literally everyone in our lives since early childhood, from our parents to our teachers and guidance counselors, and from the people at companies for whom we’d like to someday work; they all told us to get a college degree, and they all told us to take out a student loan to do it.
But it turns out that almost all of it is a big scam! Most of didn’t really learn anything we couldn’t have read in books or on-the-job. Employers today complain all the time that our generation of graduates doesn't know basic business skills and our degrees are worthless.
What’s worse is that it is primarily a scam to pay the gigantic salaries of the enormous staffs of these bloated behemoth universities, and worst of all, you put us all on a debt treadmill which would weigh heavily beyond just our struggling early years at our first jobs. Our student loans are a big budget item for all of us akin to a mortgage on a second home that we never got to visit.”