Kids go to college because even despite the wildly unacceptable costs, it remains the single best investment a person can make in their future earning potential. They go to college because it is actually very likely the correct decision with the information they have at the time.

If this were true, and most kids are doing a cost/benefit analysis about future wealth, then we would say far more engineering/math majors.

College is the best investment a young person can make even outside of STEM. Obviously the odds of financial upside varies discipline to discipline, but within most of them, college degrees are worth the money as compared to not getting a college degree (not to mention that most disciplines are entirely inaccessible without a degree).

Lots of people out here who can actually affect the labor market and affect the way student financing works, and instead of hiring people without college degrees and instead of electing people who can reform financing, they just ask students to take a decidedly stupid bet on not getting a degree. It's a silly way to solve the problem.