College has been oversold

That's a problem with high school, not university.

Are you suggesting an engineering degree or computer science degree etc. don't teach critical thinking and problem solving skills? I'd concede that better communication skills should be taught.

It's pretty obvious that the cost benefit analysis of getting a non-technical/non-business degree shows that it's not worth it, unless you can pay for it in cash. Getting $100k+ in student loans for a degree in which you can't pay off quickly will only lead to years of indebtedness.

At the current prices that students have to pay, it's simply not worth it. If I had a kid that wanted to go into liberal arts, I would suggest that they take a technical degree, and do night school for their liberal arts education, and I would forbid them from getting student loans.

As the old Wall Street adage goes, the cure for high prices is high prices. At some point, people will stop sending their kids to college if the prices keep increasing like this, and then something will have to be done about it. Unfortunately, it means that the current generation of kids will become the new debt slaves until this education crisis is stopped.

I have a similar conclusion but slightly different reasoning. And I want to defend liberal arts majors a bit, since I'm one of them.

To me, the problem is that most people don't view college as an investment in their future, but rather as a temporary place to delay choices. Certainly, it is positioned as an investment by educators, and it is probably true for science & engineering degrees, but do students approach it that way?

I have a liberal arts degree from an "elite private university", and I can tell you that the school's approach was to give someone like me everything they could possibly need to succeed, but to leave it up to me to do the actual succeeding. My major's requirements had only 8 classes - 1.5 semesters. Our "core curriculum" had a diversity of requirements, but all were easily gotten around; the science core was easily satisfied by courses such as "Solar System Astronomy", "Oceanography", or "Stars, Galaxies, and the Cosmos", as opposed to Calculus 101 or what-have-you.

I took those classes, but I took those classes in all seriousness. They may have been soft on the hardcore science, but they opened up the breadth of my understanding of the world. Some others in my class did not - they were not at school to invest themselves, and that was their right.

I think I'm much better at the work I do today because I took classes with titles all the way from Quantitative Political Methodology, to Metaphysics & Epistomology, to The Political Economy of Development, to Psych 101, to Poetry Writing, to Arabic, to Computer Science 201, to The American Frontier.

But that's because I took all of those courses dead seriously. That's what makes college a good investment. Well, and the life experience itself, but that's not exactly an "investment" in the monetary sense.

If you don't approach school that way, you're not just wasting your money on tuition - there's a massive opportunity cost. 4 years of failing at a startup is certainly a better business education than an undergrad business degree from my school.

Really, it's a cultural problem. It's like a stomach ache after eating too much candy; things were so good for so long, we collectively forgot what it was like to have to sacrifice and work for the things you want. Applying for entrance to school and actually graduating doesn't have much of anything to do with your education. That's something you have to work for.

Now, is it "in the state's interest" to promote, say, English majors? I think that's a whole different topic. I think anyone who is asking the taxpayer to fund their education needs to be ready to pay that back with directly applicable skills, which would seem to suggest you mostly need scientists & engineers.

I'm not sure it's all on the educators' side. It's also been pushed strongly by parents, because for the last few decades having a degree versus not having a degree has been the single best predictor of getting a white-collar job. Doesn't even matter what the degree is in; a 4-year degree qualifies you to get past the "need degree" HR screen in all sorts of generic office jobs, and the pay gap between "generic liberal arts degree" and "high-school diploma" has been large and growing since the 1950s.