I agree, but what may be individually rational may be detrimental from a societal standpoint. There's a compelling case that most college degrees are mostly va

I agree, but what may be individually rational may be detrimental from a societal standpoint. There's a compelling case that most college degrees are mostly valuable for signaling reasons. Most people use very little to none of what they learn at university. Yet employers still care a lot about degrees because they signal that the worker is most likely intelligent and diligent enough to successfully complete the degree. Even if its mostly a farce, it's still a smart idea to play along. Not having a degree can lock you out of a lot of important activities. But from a policy perspective, the signaling model tells us something very different than the human capital model (which assumes that higher education is valuable because it confers useful skills). If we're all just getting degrees to signal our good qualities, than its inherently a wasteful zero-sum game. The more people that get degrees, the less they're worth. Rather than talking about expanding people's access to higher-education, we should be figuring out policies to discourage people from going to college.