The biggest problem with university education is that we've fixated on the idea that everyone needs to have one. That dilutes both the perceived value of a degree and its actual value. It's hard to get the skills imparted by a university program when half the people in the first half of the program are unsuited to it. And it's hard to convince anyone it means something when everybody and their dog seems to have a university degree.
Pretty much. Of course, you have multiple concurrent things going on:
1. You have more technology oriented work being done, which required a skilled and knowledgeable work force.
1.a. Highest level of education attained initially was used as a good indicator for this. A High School dropout in the 1980's had probably never seen a computer, much less used one. So high school diplomas start looking as a good baseline.
2. You have public systems turning into little more than "paper mills" putting the emphasis on graduating students, rather than ensuring the students actually learned anything. Thus devaluing the perceived worth of the High School Diploma.
Also, budgets being what they are...
2.a While high school students may have worked with computers at least "a little bit" by the 1990's, they still weren't being used for much.
2.b At the college level however, the use of computers was starting to become rather extensive by the mid 1990's, and students enrolled were taking courses to learn more about them and had used them to some degree.
2.c -- Basically, a standard was set in many cases due to what was a transitory situation, the typical 16 year today has probably done more with technology in their short life than the average 40 year old has ever done.
3. The High School Diploma becomes nearly worthless for many good paying (entry-level) jobs, because they've decided/discovered that "only university students have the (technical) skills needed" to perform well in this new computer-focused work environment.
3.a. And now, we start seeing the paper-mill universities start to pop up everywhere, as a large demand for enrollment at colleges and universities begins to unfold as the "echo-boom" starts to hit.
So now we're in market where the economy is literally flooded with people who have bachelors degrees they cannot use, either because technology rendered their target job obsolete entirely, or otherwise created "efficiencies" which resulted in a reduction in the number of people needed.
While the increased number of (post-secondary) schools providing the relevant training increased considerably, giving us a glut of educated workers without work to do. Which has devalued the "worth" of the piece of paper they earned, often at the expense of several tens of thousands of dollars. Which is part of the problem if you listen to a lot of industry.
They're pushing college education, but college education on what? I know the stock liberal arts answer on this(as AI alludes to), and it is part of the problem(The Universities have their own political lobby, and it is usually the Liberal Arts crowd cheer leading it). In particular for much of the STEM associated industry.
