Okay, so, first off, you're looking at the homeownership rate as a dimensionless number, without any regard for how it's composed. And that, again, is a problem, because if you look at how it is composed, what you very quickly see is that homeownership is strongly concentrated among older people and among married couples, and not among young people just starting out in life. [1] If you want to argue that homeownership as opposed to rentership is significant here, in the context of a discussion around whether young people's prospects and chances are worthy of their outrage, then you need to demonstrate that homeownership is as accessible to that cohort as to any other. Which you can't do, because it isn't.

Second, I didn't say "teach yourself to code", because that isn't what has largely been pushed. Yes, if you're plugged into the tech industry zeitgeist, that's what you tend to hear. But most people aren't, and the people who have primarily been targeted by the "learn to code" marketing extremely aren't. Mostly they've been targeted by bootcamps selling snake oil and pricing it as if it were gold. Even TechCrunch sees this, and has seen it for years. [2] Why don't you see it now?

Third, you're talking out both sides of your mouth when it comes to affordability. You ask me to cite a situation in which someone can't afford to go to college based on grants and loans et cetera, and then you spend a lot of time talking about how it takes a lot of parental support to get access to those programs. As you accurately note, you can't sign on your own for grants or loans; you need a parent to do it for you, or you need to be emancipated, which is itself a complex and often quite expensive process.

It's nice to assume, based anecdotally on the circumstances of your own life, that everyone trying to make a start in life has parents with the requisite knowledge, free time, and goodwill to provide this kind of support. Unfortunately, that assumption isn't very well borne out by reality. A lot of potentially eligible students don't understand the process well enough to get through it [3], and if you don't have the good luck to be white, your odds get a lot worse. [also 3]

Beyond that, FAFSA application rates appear to have dropped significantly [4, "2017-18 Application Cycle"], well before the additional decline in both new applications [5] and renewals [6] apparently caused by the COVID-19 pandemic - both of which also appear to affect primarily students from low-income families, who are most in need of aid. And, in general, the complexity and difficulty of applying for federal student aid, and the consequent difficulty of getting the benefits you so casually assume based on personal experience must be equally available to everyone regardless of circumstance, is well acknowledged in the academic industry and has been for quite some time. [7], [8]

All of that is before we even start to get to the question of whether, and which, college degrees have value as job-getting credentials. You haven't shown anything to suggest I'm wrong in saying, or that the people I'm hearing it from are wrong in saying, that that credential doesn't have the same value it once did. Certainly in the present moment it doesn't seem to be doing a lot of good [9].

Even before COVID-19, the chances for a fresh college grad looked less than rosy, and those numbers probably don't mean a hell of a lot in light of the pandemic, when there's suddenly a glut in the job market of people who already have, not only training, but also the kind of experience that employers preferentially look for. It'd surprise me very much if we didn't, over the next few months to a couple of years, see those people tend much more to get hired back, than see people who as yet have no job experience get hired to fill the roles that do open up. And it would surprise me very much if we don't also see fewer roles open back up, even by comparison with the situation before the pandemic.

And, although I'm aware I risk cliché by saying it, the pandemic changes everything. We're probably all tired of hearing that said, but that doesn't give us a free pass to ignore its effects on our economy, and on the prospects of people who have to start out making their lives in a post-COVID world. (Not that we're anywhere near a post-COVID world here in the US, judging by the latest case rates.) Making favorable assumptions based on last year's situation is dangerously likely to lead to massive error, the way things have gone, to say nothing of making favorable assumptions based on situations a quarter century gone.

Unfortunately, you don't seem to have changed your perspective at all, whether because of the pandemic or for any other reason. You're still doing what you started out doing, namely, blaming young people today for failures that they haven't committed and that are not their fault. Asked to explain yourself, you've narrowed your focus to implicitly blaming young people who fail to launch today for the failures of their parents, in being unable or unwilling to provide the massive amount of support required to ensure they get a good start, from federal aid to college choice to guidance on how to make a reasonably remunerative career.

And that's something I do know a fair bit about, albeit not quite firsthand. As I mentioned, I didn't go to college myself, but I came up among a cohort many of whom did, and I saw how it consumed much of their, and their parents', time and effort during our senior year of high school. And that's for people who already know how to do it - and, on top of that, in a school that at least tried to do a halfway decent job of providing career counseling and support, which isn't something that can be expected of a lot of schools today. [10] dates from 2015, the most recent I could find - what do you have to show that situation has improved at all since then? What do you have to show that any of this has improved since then, or that it will do so in the wake of the worst economic injury our country has suffered within living memory?

I have to admit, I appreciate the effort you've put in to try to clarify your position here. I wish I could say I was less disappointed in the result.

[1] https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/ahr2011-3-d...

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/10/please-dont-learn-to-code/

[3] https://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/high_school_and_beyond/2018/...

[4] https://studentaid.gov/data-center/student/application-volum...

[5] https://www.nasfaa.org/news-item/21414/Decline_in_FAFSA_Comp...

[6] https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/05/07/steep-d...

[7] https://www.ncan.org/page/fixfafsa

[8] https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/01/08/hidden-fafsa...

[9] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/release/tables?rid=50&eid=48713&...

[10] http://themoriahgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/College...