I think we've forgotten that higher education is supposed to be an investment in a high-paying career (the return). As a current-student twenty-something, I can remember in high school when the rule was basically: people go to college, losers go to vocational schools, failures go straight to work.
As absurd as it seems now, it's unfortunately what we were fed (though not in so many words). College was never an investment for us, it was just the next phase of school if you weren't so terribly below average that nobody would accept you.
There is a lot of resentment, especially in the liberal arts and sciences type fields, toward higher education. Personally, if I was in charge of any hiring right now, I would look a lot more at practice and experience than at degrees and education. And I don't think I'm alone.