Well, it's bad enough that people see college as a way to make life into something like a "choose your own adventure."
God created each one of us with something in mind for each one of us, and gave us the talents and skills to fulfill that purpose. Then the person He gives them to decides they'd rather do something else, and they go to college for it... as though going there is going to give them all of the gifts and talents they'll need from God to succeed anyway, which it doesn't. Then they're shocked and bewildered when nowhere in the good Lord's divine providence is there an opening for them to just "be what they wanna be". So they have a "wake up" moment, wherein they realize "gee... this doesn't seem to be working out the way _I_ wanted it to. Come to think of it... it doesn't seem to be working out very well for many other people who have lived this way, too..." But then, rather than learning from their mistakes and trying to figure out what God wanted them to do in the first place (however profitable or not), they instead change their ambitions, to say... working up to a manager position at McDonalds.
But none of that has got anything to do with what they were meant and actually equipped by God to do in life.
If you think of it THAT way... it's not terribly mysterious to see that for so many people, all they get out of the deal is a waste of however many years of their lives. Bad economy or good, the Lord does not have to change divine providence to suit what we want to do (for example, just because the paycheck is fatter than it would be for what we SHOULD be doing).
College would be great if people used it to gain the knowledge for things they were actually meant by God to be doing. Sadly, mankind seems to view it instead as a way to (try to) cut the Lord and His will out of the picture entirely, and just do whatever the heck they want to do. Which is probably why there are so many "professionals" out there who seem better suited to janitorial work than to things that take intellect and other divinely-authored gifts they don't have.