State colleges are still extremely expensive.

Community colleges are more manageable, but most of those jobs don't value them much more than no degree. Same with online.

Boot camps are obscenely expensive, and so many are so absurdly bad that having a boot camp on your resume might lower your chances of getting a job.

Everyone who took on that debt was told, by effectively every authority figure they ever interacted with, plus the objective reality of the real world, that success was borderline impossible without a college degree. The system is bad for people with degrees for literally the same reason. Because the system is fucked and told everyone, regardless of ability of inclination, that a college degree was mandatory to even theoretically have a chance of success.