Or we could help most people learn valuable skills in their first 13 years of schooling, so the only people who need/want to go to college are those who will actually benefit.
I saw a submission in /newest last night about how one of the actual purposes of American K-12 education is 'childcare': https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23027408
"Like pretty much every everything about schooling in the US ever, it assumes that what schools do – and all that schools do – is educate. [...] The fact of the matter is our primary school system is state-subsidized childcare for the vast majority of parents who cannot afford to raise their own children in our ghastly economy. That's been the case for the last 40-plus years. This isn't new, and if it's news to you, o reader, it's only because nobody much in the US has wanted to admit this evidence of the US economy being terrifyingly more broken than we Americans are prepared to confront."
While I appreciate that public schools are supposed to serve the interests of the public, the standard factory school model isn't doing anyone any favors.
The United States' College/University system is a much more valuable institution than the K-12 as commonly exists today.
The only reform really needed for K-12 is to transform it into an institution that exists to help children figure out what they're good at, and provide the resources to help them learn what they want to learn.