The way the tertiary education "system" works is built on a premise that is contradictory to that.
Within a generation or two we went from a university system that was intended to educate and socialize (for lack of a better term) wealthy people to a university system that educates regular people.
The premise for this was/is "human capital." That is the idea that wealth isn't just wealth. Your ability to do earn income with your skills is wealth too. In that framework, education is a capital investment.. something that pays for itself.
A lot of efforts went into making these capital investments. Students spend years. Parents save for decades. Charities contribute scholarships. Governments fund universities. ..and of course, (moreso in the US) debt pays for a lot of it.
The human capital theories suggested that education is such a great investment though, that it's worth it.
It turned out though, that colleges aren't really creating the income differences observed between graduates an non graduates. A lot of what they do is just admit people who will be high income earners. The ambitious, talented, studious, academically inclined... and the wealthy.
Anyway.. The problem is that the investment is big. We (society, students, parents) can't afford for it to have a poor return, and retroactivley rebrand it as something else..
Intellectual enrichment is a very worthy pursuit, if you can afford it. That's what universities were originally for. Most people just can't afford it, on balance.