The solution is easy, and it exists here and in other countries: attend a "college" -- not a university -- for the first two years. Here in the US they are comm

The solution is easy, and it exists here and in other countries: attend a "college" -- not a university -- for the first two years. Here in the US they are community colleges. No reason to do your intro Sociology or Calculus for Business Majors general ed class at Harvard or Stanford; the content is exactly the same as at Podunk U. Instead, students should go to community college for the first two years and transfer into University upper-division majors (or, just get a 2 year cert rather than "dropping out" if you decide you don't really like college after all!). You can spend two+ years mucking around in Community College for the tuition cost of half a single semester at a private university -- my local community college credit-hour cost is literally 10x less than out of state tuition at a private school: $41 vs $441. It might even allow for some sort of internship or apprenticeship program in the interim period to let kids have some experience before they settle in on a major program. All of this sort of assumes though, that the system actually cares about student success, rather than laundering privilege, credentialism, and the student-loan fleecing described elsewhere in this thread.