I could take out a $150,000 loan to buy a splendid piece of art. It might uplift me spiritually and enlighten me in untold ways. But if the loan payments leave me unable to pay for rent or food, it's kind of moot.

As long as college is financed with debt, there needs to be a return that will outpace the debt interest or we end up with a generation of debtors who have no freedom to make use of the enlightenment they gained from their liberal arts degrees because they're forced to scramble and kowtow to the people who majored in business if they want to eat.

Naivete and idealism is how we have a whole generation saddled with student loans they can barely afford to pay, forcing them to stay in jobs they'd rather not have, delay buying a home or getting married for decades.

I know some people on the other end of six figure student loans (I'm not, thankfully, but I'm still going to be paying mine off for four or five years still). These people are not doing what they'd like to do, what they studied to do (because they can't find a job in it) and are praying for a windfall. In some cases, hoping their family members die and leave an inheritance just so they can pay off a chunk of the loans.

This is going to have profound effects on the economy and society for a long time.

So yes, idealists should know what they're volunteering themselves for and how one simple decisions can make life really difficult for them for the next 20-30 years.

This isn't the era where you could pay for a year of college with a part-time summer job anymore, like the baby boomers had.

I remember the long fight against tuition fees in my country and how we argued that tuitions wouldn't improve anything except leaving students with a lot of debt and problems. It would disadvantage so called "orchid subjects" and other subjects which didn't promise a great career. Utilisation of education would become more important than education. Even the switch to the Bachelor/Master system was/is seen as part of this development. Especially since it lead to a much more school like university. Which is the opposite of Humboldt's idea of research and studies being one.

Education might have some value to some people, in the same way that snowboarding or mountainbiking may have some value to some people. But the reason we make everybody do it is for the ROI.

Meh, it isn't black and white where you see one or the other but not both. Ignoring the ROI factor and being ignorant of it is a risky business, reckless IMO and coming from someone who intrinsically loves to learn.