from the article in post 1 said:
But Thomas yearned for the American college experience of living on a big campus.
I'm not trying to exonerate the universities here. I think what they are doing across this country is wrong and equivalent to a Ponzi scheme, like
@J0eW said. But...
The biggest problem, IMO, is the quote above, this mindset that everyone must go to college for the "experience". So many of these kids get there, have fun, then come out with worthless degrees because of pointless majors. We have got to start changing people's mindset and convince them that this "experience" is not worth the cost.
There are many fine jobs and careers that do not require college education and many of these students end up in these jobs despite walking out of a university with a degree. They could have already been on the job for years and without the debt. Many of these jobs offer decent living wages and benefits plus promotion opportunities. There are also plenty of fields that only require trade schooling which is much cheaper then college.
Even in my field, IT, it is a myth that you must go to college and get that computer science degree. I have no college degree for IT (I was stupid and went to film school, a worthless degree), I took a few certification classes and those certs got my foot in the door. 13 years later, and a handful of different IT jobs, I am earning a decent middle class wage, can support my family and have great state benefits.
My wife majored in communications (another mostly worthless degree in our opinions). She graduated in 2003 and we finally paid off her loan earlier this year because of the COVID relief money, other wise we'd have 4 more years of payments. She now works as a pre-school teacher and loves it but, you don't need a communications major to work in a pre-school.
We have already been telling our kids that they do not have to go to college. It all depends on what career they want pursue. You don't want to end up with so much debt that you can't afford to pursue your career because of the bills that start rolling in.
This country has got to get over this idea that everyone has to go to college. Most people spend 10s of thousands of dollars only to end up right back where they were after graduating high school.