Given the dumbing down of our nation's public schooling system over the past 40 years, a Bachelor's Degree is essentially the new high school diploma. It shouldn't be as expensive as it is, agreed. But most of the pilots with absolutely crushing student loan debt, myself included, got an aviation degree despite all the advice out there to get a degree in an unrelated field. Had I wised up and chosen to get a degree in, say, business communication, I would have graduated with under 20k in debt and all of that in low-interest Stafford Loans. And despite majoring in a completely useless field like aviation, I agree with the previous poster that I was far better educated, more knowledgeable about the world, and better able to express myself after I went to college than when I graduated high school. You can't fault employers for preferring that in the people they hire.