For the record, I’m not American nor live in the US, but I have a 19-year-old son who started attending the University of Chicago this year, studying economics. Just the tuition itself is $70k. My husband and I are lucky enough to be able to afford it - I still believe it’s an outrageous amount of money to attend college.
Depends on the school but yes it’s ridiculous. For a while it seemed like everyone was encouraged to attend college but now it seems like trade schools are coming back in a big way. I think people realise they aren’t going to get anything useful for the time and money they put in for the jobs they want
Public school teachers often vilified blue collar work like trades, saying things like pay attention otherwise you’ll end up as some plumber. Now the trades struggle to find good candidates partially because everyone considers them as bad jobs or “poor people jobs” despite many trades providing decent salaries and often needing a good mix of knowledge and physical skills.