The price is high because people expect to get money out of it, and more importantly to edge out other people for jobs because of having it. If people treat it

The price is high because people expect to get money out of it, and more importantly to edge out other people for jobs because of having it. If people treat it like a certificate that says "I'm allowed to make X money" then it has high objective economic value and will become very expensive. In fact, more expensive degrees will signal more wealth and success. If we treated it like a necessary component of responsible citizenship, the duty of society to generate an educated voting populace, it would be a lot cheaper and people wouldn't be so upset walking away from college "just having become educated and being better, wiser people" without a job-training certificate. Alternately, we could remove art/non-engineering science/humanities and give up on the idea of education and just have vocational training camps so every citizen can become a happy capitalist worker bee doing whatever their betters see fit to train them in.