I worry about the effects on economic mobility, and eventually on overall per-capita productivity, in a world where we stop encouraging as many people to pursue higher education.
Yes, there are people today that wind up with college debt and don't have a correspondingly higher income to pay it off. But there are other solutions to address this problem, like lowering the costs of college to where they were just a couple of decades ago. Or perhaps changing the framework by which loans are made (e.g. if college loans were simply dismissible in bankruptcy, default rates would skyrocket and lenders would not be able to hand out such large sums of money so easily, and colleges would have to adapt by lowering their costs). And on average, people with degrees still earn more than those without, and enough more to pay off a loan over time. We should be wary of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
In a world where college is no longer normalized as the default option for a moderately ambitious 18-year-old, aren't we just reverting to how things worked for hundreds of years until quite recently? The kids from upper class families will continue to go to Ivy League schools, but kids from middle class and poorer families will be told from a young age that their path is to go to a trade school, or get an apprenticeship. College is too expensive and not worth it for them, so they won't even try. It just seems like a step backwards.
Lastly, I will admit I'm somewhat personally invested in this topic, and I take some offense at the idea of useless degrees. My partner grew up lower-middle class, neither of their parents went to college, but they took out a lot of money in loans and got an English Literature degree (which I believe is a commonly-agreed useless degree). If it had not been for the encouragement of teachers, and basically society at large that college is a good idea, they could have very easily not gone and just gotten an entry level job in their home town instead. Now they have a great, high-paying career in tech working in sales and operations. One very successful founder I worked for in the past had a philosophy degree (as did many other famous people in tech, like Reid Hoffman). Every job, but especially a job in sales or management/leadership, requires working with, understanding, and motivating other people. Many liberal arts degrees focus on exactly this.
Dismissing any degree outside of science, technology, or medicine as being as useless as "underwater basket weaving" is just absurd.