Creators Walter E. Williams Aug. 9, 2017 Excerpt: The fact of business is that colleges admit a far greater number of students than those who test as being college-ready. Why should students be admitted to college when they are not capable of academic performance at the college level? Admitting such students gets the nation's high schools off the hook. The nation's high schools can continue to deliver grossly fraudulent education — namely, issue diplomas that attest that students can read, write and compute at a 12th-grade level when they may not be able to perform at even an eighth- or ninth-grade level. Cont... https://www.creators.com/read/walter-williams/08/17/is-college-education-worth-it Gets the high schools off the hook. Yes.
He gave one reason, athletics. Enrollment = dollars, one way or the other. Enrollment means satisfying demographic expectations, if not requirements.
OK so the thread has a title asking if college is worth it but you're talking about something else. I think most research shows that it is worth it, especially if you're smart about where you go, how much you pay, what you study, etc. https://www.rand.org/blog/2017/05/is-college-worth-the-expense-yes-it-is.html
Your reply is especially iffy and your own extension of the Rand article. And in the Rand article I see some sleight of hand in jumping from all students to just graduates.
Because of their faith in the ideal of universal higher education. Along with their determination that they must graduate a preordained ethnic/racial mix. And their feeling that they need to service wealthy and politically-connected clienteles (and field competitive sports teams).
I think that the argument in the Walter Williams opinion piece in the OP was that dumbing-down undergraduate higher education to the point that it just repeats what should have been learned in high-school, isn't being lost on employers. The whole value of a BA is being devalued and that's what makes the question whether earning one (as opposed to learning a skilled trade or something like that) is really worth it. A generation ago a bachelors degree was considered an accomplishment and possession of one was a mark of the country's "best and brightest". Today it's just the new high-school diploma. So you increasingly find college graduates bartending, driving taxicabs, working custodial.
Yeah, I get it. It's not a new idea. I suppose it could end that way if you're uninspired and unmotivated (and maybe you slept through a few too many of those 8am classes). But it seems clear that on average, people who earn their degree do better than those who don't. Clearly there are a lot of factors in play. You can become a plumber and earn more than a university professor (if you're inspired and motivated). We know there are outliers at both ends of that bell curve.