That economic equation only works if there is an assumption that untrained/uneducated candidates can't be found for open positions. And back in those days, it may be true. If you had not been ready for the job, was someone else ready for it? The job existed to pay someone who would pay income taxes. Back when I started my professional career, national unemployment was 10%. Had I not taken that first job, someone else would have taken it, it would not have gone unfilled.
It is very difficult for me to reconcile these seemingly conflicting concepts:
1) Today, there is a serious lack of good paying, professional jobs any more
2) Today we need to push more people into white collar job tracks, traditionally performed through college education, by making it free
If it is true that Jr. college (aka community college) is replacing the education that high school once did, we are no further ahead. We have only stretched Nanny Government to cover more years of schooling, not "better" or "higher" ed. I have been hiring for 25+ years in an urban environment, and I can assure you that people come out of community college unable to write standard English at what was once a medium Jr. High level of a competence. I won't address their reading comprehension because I really don't expect them, at minimum levels of employment, to read and comprehend much on their own.
There is national outcry about out society's need for STEM graduates, but that's not what the President's program is about.