Your argument is flawed.
This may be true for master's degrees, where it makes sense to work full time and take courses part time, but the idea that it makes sense for a bunch of 18-year-olds to try to compete over a bunch of minimum wage jobs doesn't seem like a great solution. Most jobs for 18 year olds cannot over living expenses and college tuition.
There are plenty of places that hire students full-time, for interships or full positions. Students can even get unskilled jobs - nothing wrong with that.
Working at McDonald's, possibly working you way up to shift leader, team leader or manager is perfectly acceptable.
Just so that you work full-time.
There's zero to very little career advancement while working minimum wage jobs. Minimum wage jobs won't even cover the cost of rent in most states, let alone the full cost of living and the cost of college. Saying that there are 'plenty of places' is also outright wrong considering the competition for minimum wage jobs is harsh; it's not just students that are in the pool.
Don't tell me I'm out of touch when I'm living exactly what I'm preaching. Don't tell me it's impossible when I'm doing exactly what I advocate for.
It's time to change the University system... and standing here and saying these things are too hard to fix is why it's so broken.
The solution isn't more tax-payer subsidies... it's fixing what we expect out of Universities, and what we expect out of students.
The solution is to make college free for students and wipe away student loan debt. You're not going to fix the expectations, and even if you did that doesn't solve the mess we're in right now, does it?
Not everyone needs to attend University and get a shiny degree - we need to stop that narrative while we're at it. There's plenty of trades that pay well and are in high demand. There's nothing wrong with being a blue collar worker, and we need to, as a society, stop thumbing our nose at it.
I assert making college free for students has two effects:
1) Makes the experience less valuable for the individual. 2) Increases taxpayer burden for largely frivolous degree programs.
Number one is because without "skin in the game", it's difficult to appreciate what you have. How many of us look back and truly appreciate High School classes? They were free for most of us... but it was just something you had to do to get on with your life. You weren't there because you wanted to be. You weren't hungry to learn, and you certainly don't remember every detail from 11th grade literature class, nor are you applying those experiences to your work today. We risk turning University into the same experience, and in the process we devalue bachelor degree programs more-so than they already are. That's not to say University should spin you into massive debt - we need to fix that too, but I refer back to my original assertions about encouraging (or mandating) full-time employment while attending school.
Number two is because, imo, there's a large number of degree programs that should not capture taxpayer funding or offer loans. If you're going to major in psychology, you almost certainly should continue through to a master's program or higher - if you stop with a bachelors, your job prospects are extremely limited. If you're going to major in art history - we need to be realistic with expectations... you're probably not going to find a job in that field very easily if at all.
We do our students a disservice by brainwashing everyone into believing going to University and graduating in 4 years with a shiny bachelors degree is the only way to earn a decent living. Reality is all too often the opposite - people graduating after 5-7 years with degrees industry doesn't want and zero experience in what industry expects, only to find out students can't secure well-paying jobs several years after leaving University. It's no surprise really.
And to address your first posit: You would be objectively wrong. It is a remarkably ignorant America-centric viewpoint considering many other nations and countries do in fact have free college for their individuals. It does not devalue the experience at all. Why is it that we can't learn through what other nations have done?
That seems completely wrong to me. And this is based on the implicit assumption that prospective students don't know how to use the internet, make informed decisions, get advice from parents or other grown ups. It sounds like you're saying that college students are completely gullible and are getting degrees for bad reasons and you know better than them, for their own future. And that immigrant parents who encourage their kids to go to college are also uninformed. Come on.
Additionally how do you expect students to balance out both work and college? To draw back into my experiences I frequently would have to spend 3-4 hours after class every day working on projects, doing homework and studying. Time that would seep into my weekends and beyond. Combine that with a full time job and you have a fairly high stress environment.
Other countries have students going to university full time without a problem. So then why is it uniquely an issue in America?
Nearly all American universities require their students to live in dorms for the first X years of their undergrad.
You can be exempted from this requirement if you are dirt-poor, or are married. [1]
If you are a middle class, unmarried 18 year-old, you are forced to undertake this expense - even if you have the option of living at home, or somewhere cheaper.
It's a blatant money grab. Yes, there are advantages to dorm living, but also lots of disadvantages.
[1] Apparently, all the nonesense about fraternity with your students, and learning independence, and students living in dorms having better grades flies out the window if you're married. Huh. It's almost like it's a thin justification for the university spending millions of dollars on building housing.
~3 months of food and shelter don't cost ~7k when you have roommates.
However, in my experience, most students live off-campus these days. There's just not enough student housing, and it's a terrible deal anyhow.
Can you source this statement? I know at UCB there were some students that lived off-campus but the vast majority lived in campus dorms IIRC.
Where I went, they didn't even guarantee housing to Freshmen, where my wife went, first 2 years were mandatory on-campus living.
One thing we agree on is that universities should be a place of constant learning - less pressure on doing it when you're 19-22, and more like your National Insurance payments as an adult should go towards being able to go to the local Uni and using these credits for learning.
This narrative needs to die.
Hear me out before judging...
Yes, University is expensive! But - a large portion of the numbers you see thrown around include living expenses! The same living expenses a student would incur if they were not attending University.
The predominant reason for this is students are still today largely encouraged to be Professional Students, ie. full time students who do not work, or work very little.
This mandates their living expenses having to come from elsewhere - either parents, or loans! No person should be taking out loans to eat at Taco Bell... or buy toilet paper.
Instead, we need to shift the focus away from encouraging Professional Students, but rather we should encourage Professionals who attend University.
Not only will our youth gain more valuable and tangible life-long skills and experience working full-time, but their education can become a more significant compliment to their ascension to adulthood. Working well with others, balancing a bank account, paying bills, working on real-world problems, and more!
It will take longer to gain their degree, but it will become more valuable and appreciated in the process. Graduating students will have actual skills and experience industry needs, not just academic and homework skills.
At the top of it all, they'll be graduating with much less, or no debt - since working full-time during school would have been paying the bills, buying that Taco Bell and toilet paper, and more.