I'm not sure if it meets the Ponzi scheme model, but the problem is this: lots of students are going deeper into debt to get an education that has less and less positive impact on their earning power. So the labor force will be saturated with people having useless skills (given lack of demand, government-driven or otherwise, for people with a standard academic education) and being deep in undischargeable debt.

The inertia of the conventional wisdom ("you've gotta go to college!") is further making the new generation slow to adapt to the reality, not to mention another example of Goodhart's Law.

I suppose thats true, but there is such thing as equilibrium where the factors equal each other out. I do fear that it might be to high, but again, when the price becomes unreasonable, people look for the other options that are cheaper.

And as for the future of science? The system is broken. Peer review has become pal review, and most working scientists lack serious understanding of rationality and the ability to appropriately analyze their data or know what heavy-duty algorithmic techniques to bring in.

Thats kind of sad actually, but no amount of government regulation can fix that. Unfortunatley there is little actual incentive for actual science in a pure capitalist society, though we've been going good so far.