>colleges won't reduce their rates nor increase their scholarships, they would just be completely out of reach of poor and middle class students.
If you let that run its course for a couple years then either the employers will have to relax their degree requirements or colleges will have to relax their price requirements. It'll be a game of chicken.
Do employers have degree requirements? A 1970 SCOTUS case put strong constraints on what employers could require, at least with respect to high school diplomas. The same logic would apply to college degrees. Unless a direct link to a job (not just a general linkage) could be demonstrated, if there is a de facto racial discriminatory effect (and there would be, just from different rates of graduation from college) then the requirement would be illegal.
I've been waiting for someone with a bone to pick against higher education to file a lawsuit over this. It could devalue college degrees.
Or maybe they won't. Chronic underemployment has been a thing since at least 2008. Given a reality where there are simply more people than jobs that need doing, shutting the poor out of the education system seems like just another way to increase wealth inequality.
If you let that run its course for a couple years then either the employers will have to relax their degree requirements or colleges will have to relax their price requirements. It'll be a game of chicken.