I'm astonished how much opportunities US has for education, jobs and business, yet people pass them en masse. There's a huge subset of the population that considers education and knowledge as something lame.
The second big problem is that young people are fed "you can be anything you want" mantra, so they end up studying (while spending tons of money and years) impractical things like art or history or women studies or international relations.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE art, but you shouldn't base your future on a possibility that you will become famous enough to support yourself making art.
What we need to do is educate our young people to choose their majors wisely. So next time you hear somebody wanting to study history, slap them in the face and tell them to read history porn during their free time.