I don't think this applies to all degrees, but certainly to the majority of the ones my friend's have received. It seems like so many jobs today that require a degree, don't really need the degree. A friend of mine is a case manager at a halfway house. He was just recently promoted to that position, but what he was originally been hired for required the degree that took him 5 years to earn. He could have been trained in literally three weeks to do what he needed to do (watch people piss, fill out a form saying they didn't cheat, and drive people in a van to community service). I feel that is the case with most jobs these days.
I think this is another huge point and I think there should be a serious re-evaluation of the educational paradigm, at least for some of the degrees offered.
Right now its
1. Go to lectures/read textbook for 2 years of your major
2. Get 2 years of gen eds(which have nothing to do with your job) but allegedly make you well rounded
3. Get a degree, which you can't use until you intern and actually learn how to do your job while on the job. All with the potential of a lot of educational related debt.
I would argue to eliminate the first 2 steps entirely (for the jobs which don't really require a degree) and then maybe set up an apprenticeship/internship scenario immediately out of high-school, based on the student's interests. I feel like experience is the best teacher rather than listen to a professor theorize about conceptual material.
Now on the contrary, yes there are jobs which require the typical education like medical school, engineering and so forth, and I'm in no way qualified enough to even categorize or separate them, but I do feel like an honest discourse should be had on what kids are actually getting out of their college education.