You seem to think that college is the ONLY way to make a decent living. It's not. Not by a long shot. It's still entirely possible to work your way up from the figurative mail room. You may run into a wall at some point fairly high up the ladder, but by then you can probably pay for college in cash.
Or you can work one of any number of "dirty" jobs that pay well just because they suck, either because they're dangerous, or because they're just shitty (sometimes literally) jobs.
Or you can go to a trade school. Become an electrician, a plumber, a carpenter or any one of dozens of jobs like those. Here's a little secret - for every person that goes to college because, like you, they think they need to, that's one more trade position that opens up, driving up demand for workers and driving up wages for those increasingly rare workers.
So yeah, a little personal responsibility would go a long way towards averting both this and the home loan crisis. People need to do their own research and not just listen to whomever is selling you something. If you expect someone to do their research when buying a vacuum, why not when buying a car? A house? An education?