US has lots of its specific problems, but here we're really talking about an issue which affects universities worldwide almost universally - that university degrees became a differentiator on the job market. The vast majority of undergrads these days are not seeking advanced education or trying to push the state of the art forward - they attend universities to get a piece of paper and some skills that'll land them a better job. As universities compete for students and are (indirectly) graded by how well they prepare them for jobs, a feedback loop has formed that slowly but surely turns undergraduate education into vocational one, usually to great dismay of the professors.