Yes, college is expensive. Baby Boomer educrats and tenured professors have to eat foie gras and drink the finest chardonnay while they listen to All Things Considered and crack the whip on their TAs, ya know. Young, straight, white, cis, and male is risky on most any campus anymore.
If you ain't Alpha, you ain't $hit. Say something non-PC in front of the wrong person and find yourself in the Star Chamber. The ROI on college matriculation isn't so hot in the downsized, outsourced West.
If I had a son, I recommend plumbing or being a DJ in some strip club before I'd pay for a liberal arts major at Triggerwarning State.
Young men still do go to college in the US but not nearly enough. The main deterrent for college is definitely cost. When you were growing up, community college was free and you could go to UCLA for e few hundred dollars a year.
Now community college can cost over $1000 a year, a state school can cost tens of thousands a year and a private school degree can cost into the six figures.
I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.