This may well be true in the general case (and by extension, in the majority of individual cases), but I've started to lose sympathy as I see more and more people who were told about the risks up front but still decide to get degrees that aren't good economic propositions.
Into what?
I'm from India, and I generally have to talk to my younger cousins when they think of choosing courses like Arts, History, Literature and Media studies about impossibility of making a good living with that sort of an academic background. Almost certainly these people will have to do jobs that don't remotely match their education, and are generally low paying. Career is almost non-existent, and then starts the regular whining and hating people from the STEM(and law) branches. In fact even science and technology degrees will get you nothing more then low paying jobs as teachers. Your best bet as a salaried employee is with a engineering degree, medicine and may be law.
I can only understand how much more worse it can be for people in America, with far higher student debts, high rents in cities, unfortunate health interruptions and in a largely credit driven consumerism based economy. You can pretty much spend your whole life paying loans(education, house etc).
Next time while choosing a course, at least make sure it gives you some bare minimal skills. I would even bet, some thing like carpentry, welding or plumbing would be more helpful to making a living than some thing like studying History.
My comments apply to the traditional not for profit schools. The for profit ones are probably as you say.
In the professional field, we're expected to be specialists, and if you're not, you lose out (comparatively). In life, we're expected to understand and make informed decisions on a huge range of topics, and if you're not, or if you err, it's your fault. Some people have enough support to be picked up, reflect and become stronger and make better decisions next time, but most don't.
If your family and your teachers and your self didn't prepare you to navigate this extremely complex world of maneuvering, intelligent, powerful agents... then what do you do? You suffer and you try to cope and you fight to find some peace by whatever means necessary, ethics be damned. You keep climbing or you fall.
4/5 did (a couple have grad degress) and only 1 of those has been able to make good on their investment (my sister who is a nurse). I love learning and I'm glad I am educated, but I would not do this all again. Americans pride ourselves on being a classless society, but the reality is I was born to blue collar workers and I was meant to be a blue collar worker. The extreme attempt at being a white collar worker has failed most in my family. All we did was get was huge debts that have crippled every one of us through our 20's and 30's.
And then we're told to get on our hands and knees and thank our bosses for the opportunity to never be challenged or build a career. I would rather slit my throat than continue to be lied to about all these "opportunities" I apparently have. I've made plans to do just that if I am going to be forced into another bullshit job where I get to make the world worse all for the "opportunity" to not be challenged or pay off my student loans. It sucks, but I see more virtue in going off and dying.
Among other things, it had five year projections for salaries and job prospects. It said "this is what these people get paid now, and this is how we think it will change". It said "this industry is in demand" or "you will have a hard time finding work doing this"
This is not hard to find. Nobody looks
It's typically all about how the forces are aligned against them, so why even try. And yeah, I know, learned helplessness is a thing. I get it, trust me, I do, but still...
Anyone saying these kids or their parents should've known better need to get real. Most of the middle and lower class was hustled. Of course, they and those with even fewer protections abroad are still needed to get shit done. That is, only until those jobs can be replaced with automation so profits can be even higher at the top. Humans are so fragile, costly, lazy, biased / inaccurate, and replaceable.
What then? People keep saying that things have never been better, though, so I guess there's that. Meanwhile (anecdote incoming), most of childhood friends are barely scraping by while living with their parents, clinically depressed & flirting with homelessness, or dead. The successful ones are few and far between, and they're typically those that were born with more "intelligence". And by successful, I mean achieving some kind of success that somewhat matches their parent's standard of living.