[tsotha]

>In other words, it seems that education is generally a pursuit for personal enrichment, unless you happen to love whatever field will make you money (I thank my lucky stars that I'm in computer science and my internships are quite well paid; my friends in other disciplines like journalism are not so lucky).

Personal enrichment is fine as long as you don't go into debt. Going to college to learn a valuable skill and taking on debt to do it is also okay, since you'll be able to retire your debt with your valuable skill.

But people have been screwing themselves by taking on heavy debt loads and then going the personal enrichment route. It's hard to believe they realize what they're giving up - many of these folks will still be paying off debts into their 40s.