MBA is early/mid career. You tend to be in your late 20s or early 30s and have 4-7 years of full time professional experience before starting one, and have hit a professional roadblock that requires to get one in order to be promoted (Sr/Staff Engineer to Sr PM, VC Analyst to VC Associate, IB Analyst to IB Associate, Accountant Manager to Director).
Which is my point.
Plenty of white collar careers with significant upward monetary and social potential are gatekept via higher education, and those fields without that gatekeeping are extremely commodified.
It's the same story of medicine, law, accounting, actuary, academia, and even engineering to a certain extent.
Either you spend an inordinate amount just to barely tread water in your career, or spend little-to-no money and drown with no career.
Forget about even buying a house or starting a family without parental support because you have a down payment's worth of loans to pay off.
Edit:
I re-read your post and I kinda agree. The era of being able to hoof it on your own is largely over, and parental help is increasingly critical.
This will require a massive culture change in America (eg. normalize living with parents after college like back in Asia, de-emphasize certain "milestones" like marriage and kids by late 20s, etc).