Its also worth thinking of all the unemployed kids out there who were told to go to traditional colleges and universities when that really wasn't for them who might otherwise have learned a trade. A lot of tradesmen make GREAT money. Linemen, mechanics (especially diesel), construction workers and others can make far more than most people coming out of school (university) laden with debt. This idea that "everyone needs a degree" has been one of the biggest disruptors socialists have thrown at our culture that has led to so much heartache and social unease.

We could also mention that a degree by today's standard would hardly have counted as anything more than good fire-starter by past generations. I'm sort of reminded of Chesterton's commentary in Orthodoxy where he speaks of comparative religions comparing other religions to Christianity. The only way you could compare the two, he says, is by changing the qualification of what it means to be a religion. The only way to compare Christianity and anything else is to claim everything not truly a religion (buddism, paganism), a religion. The only way they've been able to give out so many degrees to people in recent years (and why you have so many idiots with them) is to change what its taken to grant them. I'm generalizing, of course. The liberal arts have been especially affected, in a way that fields like engineering could not be.