I've seen multiple articles about how fewer and fewer students are majoring in the liberal arts and more and more are pursuing business and technical degrees. From where I'm sitting as a person who's been a staff member at various universities for over a decade, that shift is an inevitable result of the breathtaking college tuition increases.
When I was an undergrad, the big cost of college was the opportunity cost: you lost four years of income that you might have earned at some decent job somewhere. (Back then, people with high school diplomas still had a shot at decent-paying jobs). And if you were particularly focused and energetic, it was very possible to manage a full-time job while taking classes and work your way through. I worked my way through grad school paying out-of-state tuition while holding down an assortment of part-time jobs that I could bend around my course schedule; it was tough, but I did it. Lots of other people did, too. With a variable combination of luck, hard work, and determination, students could avoid taking out loans to pay for their education.
But today, that's impossible. Ordinary bachelor's degrees can cost what medical school used to. College is so hideously expensive that the only way to work your way through would be if you had a job earning $50,000 or more a year ... in short, a job that would require that you already have some kind of college degree, and the kind of job that is in very short supply in our brave new world economy.
A friend of mine did the math on his daughter's tuition; she will start college next fall. Even though she's a good student who is getting all the expected financial aid -- 50% support or better at each institution she's considering -- a 4-year degree at Indiana University would ultimately cost her more than $500,000 by the time she gets her loans paid off. In the case of IU, she'd be paying out-of-state tuition, but the other schools at which she's been accepted would be about as expensive because the in-state colleges are offering less aid. A bachelor's degree at one school, Boston University, would ultimately cost her something close to $625,000.
People are forced to think of college as trade school to have any hope of paying that back. As long as states keep trying to starve college budgets while colleges put their money into highly-paid administrators and public universities increasingly behave like for-profit organizations, there are few easy answers. I have some hope that the MOOC movement will help fill the gap for students who want to learn about the world instead of simply molding themselves for corporate consumption. And people will still have the urge to write books and create art and make movies even if they can't afford go to class to study how to do those things.