Parents want their children to go to university because it's the promise of social mobility for sure. Young adults have bought into this narrative to the tune of about 50% of the population getting university degrees now.
University, however, has always been a means of social stratification. It was meant to be a place where you need the prerequisite social and cultural capital to succeed. Governments have attempted to overcome this in the name of the greater good--again the promise of social mobility. So the upper classes have abandoned academic achievement as a sign of membership in the upper classes. Instead, they use their social capital to promote from within their ranks: "it's not WHAT you know, but WHO you know." They require students and new employees for entry level jobs to have years of volunteer experience and service. In the United States, unpaid internships are rampant. A working-class or lower-class family could not support a youth to go off and do volunteer service. A family without much financial capital can't support a young adult living on their own, working for free to acquire the new "pre-requisite" experience that was never needed even 20 years ago.
The goal posts have moved and the goalposts will always move because the upper class will not accept new membership because they see it as a threat to their existence. Consequently, university is no longer a pathway to social, cultural, and financial mobility. Credentialism has moved on to other, more difficult things for the unwashed masses to attain, now that university education has become democratized and socially subsidized.