Shutter the bad and mediocre colleges, law schools, and business programs. These diploma mills border on fraud. Most people who think they went to "college" didn't. They were expensively babysat for four years because the job market couldn't figure out what to do with them (and, alas, still can't). The upper-middle tier schools (respectable but not distinguished state schools) shall stay in business but should be half of their current size.

This problem is even more obvious in law school. "California Western School of Law" is not going to provide access to the level of means that most people associate with being a lawyer. These are the schools that law students call TTTs-- third tier toilets-- and the job prospects they provide don't offset the ridiculous debt one takes in order to attend them. A law program loses accreditation if less than 50% of its students fail the bar exam. There are many shitty law schools out there that take on mediocre, doomed students (like, 140 LSAT) and fail many of them in their first year, in order to improve their bar pass rate.

I think it's time to go to an "elitist" European-style system where only qualified students get to go to university and into professional programs, at least with the public schools. Only 5-15% of the population should be getting an academic college education, but it should be free (or very low-cost) for them. No student loans, no parents losing their retirement funds to tuition payments. The other ~85% can go to a private college if they can afford it, as in Europe, but it's not viewed as a universal right.