One of the reasons universities don't have enough money and students are drowning in debt is because every man and his dog can go now.
when i went it was something like 8% of the population went into undergraduate studies and 1% to masters or phd's.
Only specialist jobs required science degrees (which both mine are) meaning your degree had worth in the marketplace and got you a better paying job in the long run.
That amount was manageable for a centrally funded higher education system, and those graduates contributed more taxes (to help pay for the 'free' further education they got) due to better paying jobs.
Nowadays most jobs seem to require a degree for no reason, so a lot more people seem to think they need to get one. The govt hasn't improved things by sending more people to college, they've lowered the standards to let more people in, lowered the historical value of a degree, and put a millstone of debt around the necks of a generation of young people.
My parents were working class, they left school with no qualifications and drilled into me that getting an education was a way to get up the ladder financially so i would have a better life than them, and they were right, but i'm not so sure that's true for my kids generation.
If you weren't able to go to University because you're not cut out for academic life or could but chose not too that's fine too. there are many different ways of making money, none should be looked down on.