The following is from another paper about the mistaken valuation of higher education: The Overselling of Higher Education By George C. Leef

Higher education in the United States has been greatly oversold. Many students who are neither academically strong nor inclined toward serious intellectual work have been lured into colleges and universities. At considerable cost to their families and usually the taxpayer as well, those students sometimes obtain a degree, but often with little if any gain in human capital that will prove beneficial in the labor market or in dealing with the challenges of life.

And further:

The great expansion of higher education has led to an infusion of large numbers of “disengaged students,” which has had a deleterious effect on academic standards. In order to keep such students enrolled, schools have lowered academic standards, inflated grades, and degraded the curriculum. Many of the students who now obtain college degrees graduate with weak skills and can do no better in the labor market than taking “high school jobs.” Keeping large numbers of academically indifferent students in college is costly not only in financial terms, but also in its tendency to lower academic standards and thereby waste the time of better students.