[Jach]

Suppose you're right, that even with lowered tuition other factors don't go down enough for many people to afford it. This means they don't go to college, this doesn't mean they don't get an education, especially if they're already motivated to learn, and especially in the US where even the homeless can get free access to the internet if they really need it. In your scenario, if the job market continues its insistence on Bachelor's degrees they will find a quickly shortening supply and will have to loosen up that requirement to stay competitive.

As a compromise I'd support giving every US citizen a free netbook and rolling out free public wifi that only routes to a subset of the internet with each site hand-approved (or with a sufficiently clever algorithm from Google or someone else) to be "of public utility for learning" rather than entertainment. No facebook, no porn, no games, and education sites will have to host their own videos instead of using youtube (or an education-only youtube clone can appear), at least if they want the free users to see it. If you want the full internet, pay for it, which we already do. (Very inexpensive all things considered.)