I think you believe I'm espousing views which I don't hold. The aim of education is to learn something because knowledge usually increases happiness. Insofar a

I think you believe I'm espousing views which I don't hold. The aim of education is to learn something because knowledge usually increases happiness. Insofar as that information costs money and time, most people have decided they want additional future earnings in exchange for gaining that information. Remarkably, historically knowledge has increased happiness both directly (via things like art, satisfying curiosity, etc) and indirectly (through more productive labor). The main difference between 1916 America (when most everybody farmed daily) and 2016 America is human capital. Go look up the Solow Growth model. Income disparity has also increased in that time frame, but that's a problem of how society distributed the new found gains, not the fault of the gains themselves. If you'd read my comment, I was considering what the country thinks the use of university is. Right now the government's actions don't help people regardless of what you think the object of university is. If they want to help human capital, they should subsidize certain degrees. If they want to have as many people as possible go to college, because going to college has benefits other than increased productivity, they should subsidize (partially or completely) degrees. But the current state of affairs is just silly. There's lots of international evidence that a better educated populace makes for a better citizenry and thus a better government. That's one reason why the government pays for and mandates primary and secondary schooling in the US (the other is human capital makes our entire society better off). If we think the citizens need more education in order to provide society a benefit, we should pay for it directly rather than create a massive loan bubble which is bound to burst at some point.