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Because no matter what anyone says, college is a product.
To be successful, the customer has to be either forced to purchase a product or be happy with the results of the purchase.

For colleges, they had both ends for a while. To get a middle class lifestyle, you needed a college education (hitting both points). For a period, it would be a case where both seller and buyer were happy.

But the market shifted more and more to “Forced” purchases. The cost became higher, because the seller, the school, had no feedback from the customer. They had to buy the education, and the loans had to be paid back.

As time went on, the costs got to the point the product wasn’t worth it anymore. Yeah, you can get a different job with a degree but you are competing with people who have no debt, a H1B visa, and are subsidized by a foreign country. When a 22 year figures out they have a house payment they can’t discharge via bankruptcy, working a low paying job, and no place to live the attraction to going to Chico state fades. They tell their younger siblings and friends, or their own children (assuming they have any) and the pool of student shrinks.

So the customer stopped buying a product.

Now this doesn’t even touch the blatant racism at the schools, the actual hatred of any dissenting opinion, the the creation of an environment that actively discriminates the best and highest reward potential of the possible customers of the product.

In short if a kid is on the bubble to go to college or not, all the incentives are pushing him to NOT go.

Now the next step will be pressure by the schools to mandate people buy their product. Higher barriers to entry to fields. Certifications. Maybe even extending mandatory education through college.

But at the end of the day it is a product the customers no longer want to buy at the level they used to.