From what I can see, there's no one magic bullet. A few system-wide things that could probably help: 1) Create jobs that don't require a college degree and pay a living wage. They don't have to be a career, but something that would allow people to save up cash to pay for college and take some time to decide what they want to do would be good. This should include apprenticeship programs and trade schools. 2) Reduce university administrative jobs as much as possible. Put the power back into the hands of professors in the form of short-term appointments, instead of in the hands of a class of people that just move from administrative job to administrative job. If that sounds like it will require more time from professors, hire more faculty that care about doing good work, rather than administrators that care about ROI. (I have a lot more to say on the second point, but that will have to wait for a day when I'm willing to be angry about stuff.)