Before college can be creating well-rounded citizenry or provide "excellent life experiences" or any of the other things people want of it, it must first provide a good ROI. This is a necessary foundation. If it is not doing that, then all the other fancy things are merely digging the debt trap in deeper because you're paying for all these things while failing to obtain a method of paying them back.
As a culture, in decades past we were used to college generally being so cheap that providing a good ROI wasn't that big a deal. It's much easier to get a good ROI out of something cheap. So we focused on the higher layers and were able to neglect the fact that the higher layers were always built on a foundation of the fact that college in general was a good ROI. Consequently we have come to misinterpret those higher level things as the purpose of college.
But it is necessary that these aspirational benefits be setting on a good foundation of good ROI to not be abusive to the customer.
It is not and must not be considered some sort of betrayal to be worried about ROI for college. It must simply be seen as an understanding of the fact that as the costs have changed, the way we must analyze college has also changed. It was always true, it's just now it has manifested in a larger way.