There are a bunch of comments which are conflating the lack of apprenticeships with the general recommendation of college as a basic requirement for young peopl

There are a bunch of comments which are conflating the lack of apprenticeships with the general recommendation of college as a basic requirement for young people, which doesn't make sense. You can do both: this is how doctors learn today: 4 year college followed by Residency of some sort. The same model could be replicated for other fields if they so demanded. An equally plausible theory is that the American economy has moved away from primary, low-tech factory jobs to high-tech ones that require a more educated workforce, and the Education sector has responded to that demand. The other somewhat unrelated factor has been the explosion of student loan debt which exploited that demand for education for its own ends. I would also speculate that having the experience of college and mixing and meeting with people from all over the country is a benefit that is often overlooked today; Americans that don't experience that lose out on an opportunity to meet and know people that they never would have otherwise.