First of all, getting a Liberal Arts degree is not useless. If you think that the purpose of a Liberal Arts degree is to make you fit for a trade/industry/commercial service then you are misunderstanding the point entirely. The purpose of such an education is to make you a more intellectually developed citizen. And while it's true that self-education can be as good or better than "schooling," it simply is not the same as a rigorous Liberal Arts education. If you think that studying English, Philosophy, History, etc. is useless, then it probably would be for you. And I wouldn't to have had people like you in my class anyway.

That being said, unless you're swimming in money, taking out 100k in loans to pay to attend college is both foolish and unnecessary. I lucked out and earned a scholarship to a private liberal arts school, but my brother and sister both managed to basically pay their way through state school -- it's entirely possible -- and their educations were probably comparable (a few courses excepted) in quality to mine.

For those of you saying "go be a plumber" -- not everyone can be a plumber. We still need a lot of people in a lot of offices, believe it or not, but many those jobs have gone from requiring a college degree and minimal experience (with on the job training) and paying 30k+ to start to requiring a bachelors + masters + 3-5 years experience and paying 24k. Those positions are still considered "entry level" and often don't have benefits, even though the job reqs and responsibility are commensurate with a fairly experienced worker. Employers are squeezing employees because they can. Certainly some small businesses are squeezing because they have to in order to survive, but many larger companies are rolling in record cash flow and profits, yet demanding more and more for less and less pay. That's how it goes... and everybody knows...