It would be better if we found ways to let young people get into white collar and middle class professions without spending $100K and four years of their lives. This used to be possible. I'm quite sure it could be done again, but collectively we're not going to go there. Yet, anyway.
Sure, but it answers the question of why a degree is “needed”, and that is given the supply and demand curves for labor, the suppliers of labor need it to compete with each other.
> It would be better if we found ways to let young people get into white collar and middle class professions without spending $100K and four years of their lives.
Really simple, remove all taxpayer funded (including guaranteed) education loans, and any special bankruptcy protection they might have.
The two options here are that either all the businesses using college degrees as a signal are wrong and they could be saving a lot of money by hiring non college educated applicants for slightly less pay and building them up.
OR college education is a useful signal and so businesses are willing to pay a higher price for it.
If the prior were true, then I would assume a business would have developed already to take advantage of the arbitrage opportunity. It is not a novel or less known idea.