College is no longer about education. It’s a debt-based social sorting system

[Carmela (Carmela A.)]

Universities don’t exist to teach anymore — they exist to filter people by how much financial pain they can survive. The wealthy glide through on family money and connections, while everyone else is forced to gamble their future on six-figure loans just to access the same piece of paper. The classroom became a toll booth, not a place of learning.

Debt isn’t a side effect — it’s the mechanism. It keeps working-class students obedient, risk-averse, and trapped in jobs they hate, while elite graduates walk out debt-free into high-status careers. College doesn’t equalize opportunity — it locks people into the class they were born into, then pretends it was merit.

It’s not higher education anymore.
It’s a financial obedience test disguised as a diploma.

[John]

College isn’t a “debt trap” — it’s still the most reliable engine of upward mobility ever built. No other system takes millions of ordinary people and gives them access to elite knowledge, networks, and careers at the same scale.

Debt is a problem — but education is the asset. Skills, credentials, and social capital last a lifetime; loans don’t. Calling college a scam ignores one brutal truth: the people with degrees still dominate the economy — and the people without them are the ones being locked out.