But cb7893, your Nebraska and Georgia examples are essentially state-funded free education. They would be positive examples in support of the idea that the state might deem it useful to subsidize college educations. In short: I agree, those are good programs and we should emulate them. Not every state has them so why wouldn't we want to try to find a viable method for all states to offer that in their public institutions?
KP Eng is right. It's just a different economic world. All data supports this. Students ARE saddled with radically more debt than they used to be, and college IS radically more expensive. These are simply facts. If you'd like to point to anecdotal evidence of lazy people you know who went to expensive colleges and left with debt, feel free. Of course you can find those examples; we all have a few. And the girl in that video is completely unimpressive. You can definitely find that out there.
But none of that changes the reality that we have a broken system of financing in higher education and we're seeding a generation of debtors for the future. It's unclear to me why people want to deny what is factually true -- supported by all data -- because of personal stories of annoying, entitled millennials. We all know some of them. That doesn't mean there isn't a greater policy point here. You can refuse to sympathize with an annoying 19 year old you know without refusing to acknowledge what is a perilous economic situation we're creating for ourselves in the US.
Also the argument that "no one held a gun to your head," misses the point. It's now a requirement to have a college degree for all kinds of jobs -- some police departments require it, some fire departments, nursing, early childhood practitioners, lots of municipal jobs, more and more IT jobs, and on and on. These are good jobs you used to be able to get without a college degree, and now you need a degree, or at the very least a substantial number of credit hours and proof that you're pursuing a degree.
So the point is: If we're going to make having a college degree an entry point for more jobs each year, and we're simultaneously going to let the cost of that required education rise well past the rate of inflation each year, we are de facto herding kids toward debt.
I think there's a false sense here that all college kids are clubby 18-22 year olds who are partying and have no sense of responsibility. That's a fraction of the undergraduate population. Read an intro about US college kid demographics here:
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c2/c2s2.htm (it's only a start, but you can dig around more in the linked data if you want to get a sense of the breadth of the college population these days)
A solid 40% are enrolled in community college and community. Many others are commuters to 4 -year schools. Many are well beyond their early 20s and are returning to school while working. These people are responding to the fact that more and more decent paying jobs in our professional world require college degrees. I personally don't think that makes a lot of sense and that we should have fewer degree requirements -- I think this rise in check-box degree requirements for jobs that have little-to-nothing to do with the content of degrees is a leading cause of the decline in rigor in universities. They've at least partially become cash cow, credential mills feeding into these demands. And yes, some people can become plumbers, some can become electricians. Those are great, well-compensated professions. I have friends from high school who chose not to go to college and made that choice, and they're happy with it. But that can be an answer for, at most, a tiny fraction of the population.
As it is, the college demand exists in many professional sectors and kids are going to get boxed out of decent jobs b/c they don't have college degrees. Thus, we need to make college truly affordable. Which, for various reasons, might mean free. It's at least worth having a reasoned, data-drive conversation about that concept. It's about practicality as much as it's about sympathy.
Though yeah, you know, I do sympathize. Even if it IS because they made a mistake in judgment at the age of 18 or 20 or 22, I'm still far from envious of someone saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in debt and few job prospects. That's bleak.
LOVE Judge Smails!!!!