I know you disagree, but that's also irrelevant.

The degree is irrelevant. It's no longer required.

The cost of flying relative to a degree is irrelevant, in part because the degree is no longer required, in part because financing for flight training is largely had through a degree program (thus making the degree more expensive), and finally because degree programs run the gamut from a few thousand to several hundred thousand, and unless you intend to compare flight training outside of a degree program to financed flight training inside a degree program, you have a non-sequitur, irrelevant comparison. Further whether the flight training costs the same as a degree, or an expensive chihuahua emblazoned with the brand of Paris Hilton, or a ride on the next Bezos tourist trip to space, is irrelevant. Flight training is none of those things. A bolt might cost the same as a plum, but the comparison is irrelevant.

Regarding career paths, it's also irrelevant unless you're talking about a pilot career path obtained outside of the degree program, vs one obtained inside the degree program. If you're talking diverging paths, two different careers, then it's quite irrelevant, any more than one goes to dental school to become a plumber, or seeks motorcycle repair training to sign contracts in a law office. Entirely different subjects, but with the same logic, next time the barn burns down, we'll de-horn all the cows. Makes no sense to you? Exactly.

If you're attempting to suggest that kids today have no desire to take flight training because they can get a degree for the same cost, this is also irrelevant. Again, there is a very wide range of degree cost just as there is a wide range of degrees; the coincidental equivalency between cost of flight training or cost of a particular degree is irrelevant. Flight training costs vary widely, as do degree costs.

A student can easily obtain financing for college; the same is often not true of flight training, further invalidating the comparison between flight training and a degree. A pilot, having obtained FAA certification, holds the licensing and qualification to be employed; degree programs which grant any particular licensing are typically far greater in cost than flight training. The comparison between flight training and college, particularly regarding one vs. the other on a cost basis, is irrelevant.

Flight training is seldom taken as a cold, hard, calculated mathematical decision, but rather an emotional one: the student wants to fly. The student wants to do it because it excites him or her, it inspires, calls to, draws that person. Few young people are calculating their retirement bottom line when they pick a career. Many students who enter college change their majors, often more than once. They don't know what they want. The select few that enter high-yield careers such as law or medicine aren't drawn by the same incentive; the cost of entry isn't their comparison. They'll be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars and will carry that debt for a very long time. The entry cost isn't a barrier to them, but the bottom line and the career future is. Few kids wake up excited with their vision of the future to proclaim, "Ma, Pa, I wanna be a god damn proctologist!"

Conversely, kids today still get excited at the sight of an airplane, and when they proclaim their love of the sky, their parents may say, "God damn, why couldn't you be a proctologist?"

The entire discussion of what kids want, and whether they're drawn to flight, is an entertaining, but irrelevant sidebar to the discussion of raising the retirement age to 67. Raising the age to 67 will do nothing to hinder aviation recruits; retirement is so far removed from the fledgling flyer's thoughts as to be meaningless. The industry will have changed so drastically in thirty or fifty years as to render any comparison of an age 67 retirement limit to student pilot numbers, absolutely irrelevant.

The biggest barrier to starting flight training, and the hardest part of learning to fly is not, and has always been, cost. Whether one cherry picks a degree as a comparison to that flight training, or a beagle farm in Germany, is irrelevant; and more germane to this thread, neither is relevant to raising the age of retirement to 67.