That's correct, but incredibly irrelevant. Yes, money is only "money" because we as a society decide it is. But we as a society (in theory) also decide what our government should spend money on. It is our money, no matter how you look at it. The government does take some of it from us as the price of having a civilized society, but we still get to (collectively) decide what that money is used for. And if we don't like paying for a 4-year college education for someone who is going to end up being a parking attendant, we have the right to try to find a way to fix that.

Maybe we'll fail, but we have the right to try to change things.