A degree in something like Molecular Biology is obviously of value, even if the holder is a 22-year-old who's never even glimpsed the "real world". But a VERY small percentage of 18-22 year old college students in the U.S. are studying that sort of thing, and an alarming percentage of that small percentage consists of foreign students. More students WOULD be studying serious subjects like that if they arrived at college with several years of full time work and financial self-sufficiency under their belts.
The urban college where I've taken some science courses has a sizeable post-bacc pre-med program, with most of its students having several years of post-college employment. I've had and overheard many conversations along the lines of "So what did you major in in college?"; typical answer: "Creative Writing", accompanied by rolling of eyes and an expression that says, "Yeah, I know, what a silly naive kid I was". IMO, anyone who thinks it makes sense to major in "Creative Writing" doesn't belong in college, and most of the people who did major in things like that, end up wishing they had the time and money back, so they could do college over again the right way.
I finished a year of graduate school in pathogenic bacteriology. During that year, I resumed an interest in electronics and earned an Advanced Class ham license and a First Class Radiotelephone license with Ships RADAR endorsement. That improved my income from $2.45/hour plus commissions at Radio Shack to a whopping $4.75/hour. I even had to join IBEW Local 569 for the pleasure of working in the shipyard. The marine electronics work provided good "hands on" hardware design and troubleshooting skills that have served me well in engineering large computer systems.
It wasn't until 1980 that I took a job at PacBell where my degree had any influence on being hired into a first level management position. I started at $19,000/year as a toll equipment engineer. Pencil pushing, job estimating and supervising installations by Western Electric. After 3 years of that dreck, I moved to the IT side of the house. I was finally able to leverage my skills as a UNIX systems programmer. Kernel and device driver development. My income tripled by 1991. Working 14 hour days X 7 days a week had some influence too.