If we treated it like a necessary component of responsible citizenship, the duty of society to generate an educated voting populace, it would be a lot cheaper and people wouldn't be so upset walking away from college "just having become educated and being better, wiser people" without a job-training certificate.
Alternately, we could remove art/non-engineering science/humanities and give up on the idea of education and just have vocational training camps so every citizen can become a happy capitalist worker bee doing whatever their betters see fit to train them in.
Many people believe that an education is a good thing in its own right. Its a sad view of life that you're own betterment isn't worth any price. I guess its all for hedonistic pleasures then? Video games, movies, fancy car - those are the meaning of life?
* middle class
* structured
Also, if it were all for self-betterment, why have degrees at all? Why not just take classes that seemed worthwhile? Why have grades for that matter?
We have degrees to satisfy the need for some for closure, to recognize accomplishment, and to get old students out of there and make room for new ones. That a degree has been fastened onto as a job-training certificate is just unfortunate.
But they really wish they could, and they actually believe they can, because there are always loans available to them.
I think the useless degree is an extreme form of luxury. You get to show others that you are rich (otherwise you would work or go to a vocational school) and that your money doesn't define you (because otherwise you would study something useful to make more money).
Middle-class people don't typically spend years of their lives and tens of thousands of dollars on structured self-betterment activities.