What I don't understand is, why weren't more people able to make the inference I did: "If a college education doesn't actually make you better at performing a job, then there's nothing to sustain the trend of employers from hiring you simply because you have one -- they could just quit doing it one day, and I'd be out in the cold. So I should take a major that is actually needed for certain jobs."

Or, to put it another way, "College doesn't actually make you a better worker for most majors, so hiring based on it is stupid -- that trend can't continue."

If I could see it long before applying for college, why couldn't others? Yet I was continually seeing many, many people around me taking majors with no clue as to how that would make them substantively employable.