Upper level education costs a lot of money and involves years of time, don't these people think about what they want to do with their lives? Don't they do at least cursory research into what that degree will mean to their careers?
Every high school has some sort of career counselor. Colleges have many of them. These days, research on the Internet (these are pre-PhD Lit students, don't they know how to Google?) makes it simple to look up salaries, opportunities to be hired, personal stories from those in the career, etc.
Maybe this trend toward people realizing that many degrees are near useless is just a result of the economy and tougher times finally making the practicality of education paramount. It seems a shame that you need bad circumstances for people to evidence some common sense, though.