What it boils down to for me is that SOME colleges are not helping their students. People are using this partial failure, and extrapolating it into these arguments that all higher education is worthless.
This isn't good logic, much less good advice.
"College is expensive. The College Board Policy Center found that the cost of public university tuition is about 3.6 times higher today than it was 30 years ago"
This is insane. Public university tuition has inflated about 360%, while salaries have stayed flat or declined, and unemployment is on the rise.
I agree with others that college benefits those who take advantage of what it offers, but when you come out with 6-figure debt, the cost/benefit of "investing in yourself" is seriously in question.
The societal fabric in the USA has been under assault by the rich and elite, and public schooling (both k12 and collegiate) is merely one of those threads that's becoming unraveled (by the excessive burden of the profiteers/leeches).
Some colleges and some majors. I wrote elsewhere: "the word "college" can now mean so many things in so many places that it's hard to compare them. Does a random community college have much to do with a four-year party school, an Ivy-League school, a Midwestern technical school, or a Cal State school filled with first generation students? Probably not." This also applies to majors / departments, and the problem with criticizing "college" is that you're criticizing such a heterogeneous set of institutions, practices, and experiences that you're not actually describing a specific good or ill.
I think the anti-college movement is good because it helps draw a line between those parts of the workforce that value a degree and those that don't.
No one is arguing specialized education is bad, but there are much more efficient ways of getting there.
Now that you told me what college isn't about, what is it about? And why must it be threatened by a modern business model?