I am all too aware of higher ed costs and products, as I work in the system.
Lots of grants and other aid out there. Opportunities for kids to at the very least go to state colleges while also working. If you’ve got grandchildren with full graduate Ivy League scholarships they are either quite bright or from a quite favored minority group.
For the bulk of kids, a couple of years at a community college where their state school guarantees admission with full credit acceptance is a very viable bargain alternative.
As always, but with the Internet more universally than ever, education is what the students make of it.
No it is the result of the systemic destruction of the manufacturing industry in the US and offshoring it to poor countries and moving the US to a service based economy.. and the intentional effort to depress wages.
Women weren’t working in factories and mines and other places driving down wages by an increased labor pool.. wages have been depressed because nearly every well paying job has been outsourced/offshores or has been systemically undermined an wages depressed by the intentional importation of foreign labor (illegal immigrants and H1B programs)
Tax policy and “trade” have been used to destroy US incomes and standard.