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.
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.