The system of higher education isn't going to change because people have too much invested in it, and that investment can never go bad like the housing market or tech stocks did. College graduates will talk about how much they learned, the networking and social experience or of being exposed to new ideas and ways of thinking. It isn't possible to question the value of those intangible benefits, or to prove to someone that they could have gained the same things through other means. So the system perpetuates itself.
To be honest, it seems like an unbreakable cycle. Well off kids go to college, get jobs and move into management where they hire other well off kids who also went to college. MOOCs, community/online colleges and vocational schools are emerging as additional options, but most of the decision makers at major institutions attended traditional four year colleges and expect the people they work with to have done so as well.
It seems like the best way to control the cost of education would be to make employers responsible for paying for it, instead of the students. Then market forces would come into play. If a business had to choose between paying $120k to send someone to Harvard or $20k to send them to a state school or community college, then they would have an incentive to evaluate the difference in quality of education and training from the respective institutions. Right now all of the financial risk is placed on students, and businesses get to pick and choose who to hire with relatively little consequence.
Obviously the system isn't going to change any time soon, if ever, no matter how many opeds the washington post publishes.