It's not like people are forced to take student loans.

[lumberjack_jeff]

127. Macro: Colleges serve a useful purpose because they provide the social capacity to do things.

Shoving more bodies through the school doesn't increase the need for those skills. Society's need for rocket scientists is limited by society's need for rockets.

The college industry has run headlong into this problem. There is an oversupply of people trained to do the specialized tasks that only a college can provide. What happens to the surplus?

This has resulted in two major phenomena:
a) To fill and expand this overbuilt college infrastructure, they recruit students from outside the US. Those trainees then either displace our rocket scientists, or return home to build their home country's rocket industry. Both are bad outcomes.
b) Credentialism is running amok. No one seriously believes that a Target store assistant manager needs a degree, but the corporation demands it simply because it cuts down on the number of resumes the head office needs to review. Because of the labor oversupply, this credentialism isn't reflected in rising wages, and why should it? The tasks of an assistant manager are pretty straightforward - nearly anyone could do it with varying degrees of success and the risks of making a mistake are minimal.

From labor's perspective this credentialism is a death spiral. Increased credentials increases the cost to get a job, which increases demand for credentials and so on. In 20 years, Target store managers will all be required to have PhD's and colleges will use that as a justification for your "need" to purchase their product.