The idiotic sentiment that "all Americans should be able to go to college" ignores the question of who's going to pay for it. I am all in favor of higher education, but people stop being practical when they think that they can get a free education, or that they can declare bankruptcy and get out of a loan. People need to start looking at higher education for what it really is - an education, nothing more, nothing less - and stop thinking that the correlation between a college education and higher earnings is a direct consequence of the education (or "any" education). College graduates tend to be brighter, and enough of them go on to graduate schools or have degrees in useful subjects that these factors make it seem that a college education will increase one's earning potential.

In reality, we all know that a degree in philosophy will not, by itself, help you with anything. In fact, it will probably actually hurt you because the student debt is crushing. Furthermore, because more and more people get degrees in useless fields, there are more and more graduate students and professors for these fields, depressing the pay for academics.

I have nothing against getting degrees in these fields - I myself considered it on numerous occasions - but we need to be realistic. If you have no money and you're getting a student loan, you need to realize that you're taking on $100,000+ in debt that will need to be paid off. Getting a degree in "Comparative Women's Studies" from a third-rate university is not going to get you a job that will help you pay off this cost. You have to ask yourself long and hard - IS IT WORTH IT?

Any system that would remove this pressure is bad.