It's fascinating how much of this reflects societal priorities in what to reward. That's made entirely obvious by "education" being one of the low ROI degree programs: teaching effectively genuinely does require a college degree, and society genuinely does need effective teachers! (The more students grow up with poor teachers, the more we waste our human potential.) But US society has chosen to pay teachers a low enough salary that it doesn't end up working out financially.
Absolutely none of this is about "students making poor choices"! Or at least, if every student made "smart" choices, we'd be left without anyone to teach our kids. (And in fact, that's happening, to some degree. My local school system has struggled to fill some vacancies for the past few years. And Florida, for example, has had such a teacher shortage that they've decided that military veterans and their spouses are mysteriously automatically skilled teachers even if they've had no training or college education at all. Paying higher wages doesn't seem to be considered an option.) I suspect that some of the other "low ROI" fields suffer in similar ways.
Absolutely none of this is about "students making poor choices"! Or at least, if every student made "smart" choices, we'd be left without anyone to teach our kids. (And in fact, that's happening, to some degree. My local school system has struggled to fill some vacancies for the past few years. And Florida, for example, has had such a teacher shortage that they've decided that military veterans and their spouses are mysteriously automatically skilled teachers even if they've had no training or college education at all. Paying higher wages doesn't seem to be considered an option.) I suspect that some of the other "low ROI" fields suffer in similar ways.