Encourage employers to use SAT and ACT scores and internships to identify bright and teachable applicants.
Two reasons;
1) Most of the work done in the U.S. is learned on the job regardless of whether or not the employee has a college degree.
2) Little of the work done in the U.S. historically required a college level education. A solid 8th grade education was more than enough. Honestly, my parents and grandparents would laugh at the idea that the check-in person at the Marriott hotel now needs to be a college graduate.
Nice thought, but I’m not sure I agree with your assertion #1. The most important professions for our future growth require hard science education. It is not likely that, for example, a chip designer or mechanical engineer would learn the required math on the job.
Economic growth will be driven by technological innovation and development, not by hiring a bunch of people to wait tables at Chili’s and screw lug nuts onto cars on an assembly line.
If that obstacle can ever be dealt with, the whole house of cards will come crashing down pretty quickly. This is why so many of the articles you see on this subject (like this one here) are based on anecdotal stories from people whose majors (journalism, for example) don't involve formal professional licensure.
Illegal. And that is the reason for the education bubble.
Fifty years ago, businesses routinely administered IQ and academic tests to determine what jobs people were suitable for. Then, in Griggs v. Duke Power Co (1971), the Supreme Court ruled that under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, if such tests disparately impact ethnic minority groups, businesses must demonstrate that such tests are "reasonably related" to the job for which the test is required.
So businesses decided to require degrees as an expensive substitute for such tests.
We need to repeal the various "Civil Rights Acts" first.