Because "go to college" = "get diploma" = "get higher paycheck"

Somehow it all comes back to devaluing the Trades.

School admin won't let teachers flunk students at that rate. If universities started refusing to let these students pass/graduate, it would be reflected on the school & teacher's reputation - undeservingly so, but that is the world & metrics we have built for ourselves.

Aww yiss! Name the time and the place!
And the setting, and starting level, and race/class restrictions

That sounds like an easy thing to fix ✋

Why does the ejecta cloud appear to be polar? I would imagine that, if anything, the poles are the last bastion of the collapsing magnetosphere,so the ejected gas cloud would be closer to a torus shape.