I don't think we should abandon it, but if you want to pay 500k usd for you degree on french poetry in the 17th century, you should pay for it yourself.
Having come from a liberal arts program: excellence there is a strong predictor for general workforce competence, including in technical fields (like I am now). I studied 18th century German philosophy, and now I work on compilers. But even this shouldn't be a necessary justification: developing our understanding of history, society, and the human condition is sufficient in itself.
[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-50-most-expensive-colle...
[1]: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/stony-brook-suny-2838/p...
Me getting a STEM education will pay me back quickly. Thus I can afford to pay for it.
Society probably need someone to do those other things as well, which don't pay as much. So therefore we should pay for it.
Nobody should pay for it directly. It should be virtually free to go to college, the way it is everywhere else in the developed world. It should be that way because it's single most obvious investment and high-returning investment any country can make in its future.
If you are going to invest into something, it should be good investment that gives returns. An Useless degree clearly do not give enough returns not even to pay for itself.
Whatever your particular country's failures are might be unfortunate, but they don't counteract the track record of success here. It might be worth considering whether both of our countries would do well to change, rather than presuming that your country's failure will also be mine's.
You're assuming that individuals capture the entirety of the value they generate for society (and that they do so exclusively in the form of income), which is essentially never the case.
If so, we're already agreeing in principle and just disagreeing where the line is.