Nowadays “colleges” just offer many young people four more years of high school.
Affirmative action students are ripped off the worst; slapping a college degree on students who can barely read is criminal. One of the reasons they delve into bias in job applicants’ names is because it is no secret that college degrees held by certain “preferred minorities” are absolutely worthless.
One thing that impressed me in the "Truman" book by David McCullough was Truman could read both Latin and Greek, and he "only" had a high school education. His high school was probably typical of those of the early 20th century when a high school degree actually meant something.