>Many of the jobs that offered a leg up to those without a college background no longer exist and won’t come back.
The jobs thing is interesting. I changed careers via a bootcamp (that's a whole other topic but let's just assume they produce some portion of viable candidates (like me!)), and I found a lot of jobs requiring lots of experience, working with 8 frameworks / languages (at least) described as "entry level"... and if you can't say you worked with all those things the impression you're just out and they'd rather sit there looking for someone for a year (giving HR and recruiters something to do I guess) than actually try someone out.
It would be nice to see more jobs / companies open to hiring non traditional type folks for say 6 months trail, reasonably well paid (obviously not the salary for 8 languages / frameworks guy, and find people who can help to some extent now, and later.
It could extend to even other areas of work with shorter term retraining and reasonably paid, but still entry level type work.