While humanities majors are on the lower end of salary scales, there are plenty of assumptions that you made there. For one, "paying through the nose" is unlikely -- one term at Seattle area community college is about $1,300.
So I repeat myself - paying through the nose. Unless these things he did want to learn were so secret there was no public course online and no information on the internet, I fail to understand what kind of RoI this education would make during an education bubble.
I'm sorry he wasn't in a position to do something stupid (and something many people also did while managing to escape the consequences of their acts) but it was totally predictable.