[lithos]

If I were to blame one group, it would be the loan industry. Though I wouldn't fault them for it or say it was intentional (at least at the on set).

First you become forced to make loans easier (it only take a quick glance to see them taking sure and comfortable bets, combined with a little social Justice a statistics the govt. Mandates unsure bets). This open the flood gates of who can get loans, people apply in great numbers (combined with culture, and people not realizing what they're getting into). Which leads to a huge glut of college grads no one knows what to do with... With market pressure the students go for lower and lower positions. Which becomes the new baseline qualification.

[adrianratnapala]

But in many other countries, University places are either taxpayer funded or funded by a government loan scheme with with fiarly easy terms. As you can imagine, that leads to the same result as in the US.

So I would say these countries had a pre-existing moral ideal that everyone should have an undegraduate educaton, and then solutions (such as the US student loan industry) came about to implement that ideal.