I don't know why people pay for degrees. I never bought one, and I never had a problem with opportunity in my life as a consequence. Imo, the bottom needs to drop out of this market.
Economists almost always hand-wave away the financial (let alone human) cost of forcing people can switch jobs or careers, then complain people are "irrational actors." I assume they do this because economists are actually bad at economics and so should find jobs more suited to their aptitudes.
Remember that previous examples of people rioting over poverty has included literally beheading the rich, en-masse, in a fundamental change of the nature of national governance.