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Most colleges for most people nowadays are a minimal excuse for slacking and parties; and this is worse than merely a waste of time and resources - it is bad for the students and it is bad for the colleges.
The students end-up having forgotten more in three years than they have learned, with a pack full of bad habits and an ingrained sense of entitlement; the colleges are destroyed by the basic dishonesty of the system - they become certificate mills that sell fake qualifications in exchange for fees - rationalized by pretend work, wholesale cheating, and pseudo-skills.
Yet parents feel it is mean to deny kids the 'experience' of college, and so do their kids - so what is an alternative?
If the party-slacker experience is considered to be an essential part of (ahem) growing-up, then the parents could pay for a solid year of this - maybe a year of travel and work 'abroad', of voluntary or church service, a year playing computer games, or being a writer or a dancer, or walking in the hills, or playing football or cricket - or whatever.
Then a year (or maybe two) of serious vocational training to prepare for a basic, realistic, get-able job that pays above minimum wage (thereby providing a more valuable education than that attained by the majority of graduates).
This would be much cheaper than three years at a residential 'college' pretending to learn; and might potentially be of some minimal value to the student, the parents, and 'society' (whatever that is...).
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