Greetings!
Interesting topic. In my opinion, a higher education is and always will be necessary in this world. We all know our reality nowadays is absolutely different to the reality we lived years ago. We don't need to talk about decades, but a few years ago to notice a huge difference in our society. We can find teenagers that earn twice the money their parents earn (and more) by just using the internet. Some of them do wrong stuff their parents shouldn't allow them to, and some of them make an effort to create content, get virtual jobs, etc; so there is no doubt those people (an entire generation, perhaps) may believe there is no use in getting higher education. However, my answer is based in this simple logic: there are things in this world that can't be solved by a computer or a smartphone. There are real problems that need human assistance, human intelligence, humans! We need our professionals. We need our doctors, our lawyers, our teachers, our architects, our engineers, our policemen, etc.
Even if those professionals will eventually disappear from this world and be replaced by virtual assistants, tiktokers, youtubers, all kinds of streamers, gamers, and worse stuff that is already being done by young people but I won't mention, we still need real professionals and we will.
Thanks!