Education Disorder

Through a long series of ponderings today, I starting thinking about how American society's regard for higher education has changed over the past few generations. A couple generations ago, going to college was a big deal that required a serious decision to forego the ability to support a family so that one could devote oneself to further education, in the hope that it would make the student better able to contribute to society. It was only the affluent that could afford to take on such an endeavor without contemplating the sacrifice.  In contrast, it was viewed as a noble venture, or often as a waste of time, by most working-class families.  However, we have now come to a point in American history in which college is seen as "expected"; the decision facing many (I dare say most) current high school students is where to go to college rather than whether.
This is good, right?  This means that we have reached a point where we value education and understand the necessity of a populace with deeper skills, right?  Perhaps.  However, it reminds me of an interesting correlation that is seen in the mental health field: Anorexia is most common in societies and communities in which food is most plentiful.  In other words, greater assured access to food is correlated with a higher rate of voluntarily (though I use that word cautiously) refusing food.  Although I would need to look it up (this is a blog, not a peer-reviewed article), I'm sure someone has proposed the interpretation that when food becomes plentiful, it gets taken for granted, and it is seen as "disposable".  A person can refuse food when it is available because they know that there will always be more.  If you don't like the example of anorexia, just think about all the food that people throw away simply because they took more than they could eat.  Same basic concept of food being taken for granted without thinking about the cost or how fortunate we are to have the luxury of "wasting" food.
I worry that the same will happen to education, or perhaps already is.  I see students who really do not understand the cost of college, to themselves and their parents.  They have an all-you-can-eat opportunity to learn, some at the finest establishments in the world, and they squander it because they never doubted that it would be there.  My biggest concern is that it could truly become an analog to anorexia by being such an expectation that the next generation forgets, or fails to understand, how vital higher education is to survival.  College should be a lot of fun, but it should also be a time to stock up on as much knowledge as possible so that it can sustain a person throughout the rest of life.  I look forward to education becoming so plentiful and easily accessible that no person is deprived, but I also hope that we remember its value so that we as a world community can grow fat on knowledge.