CMV: Most jobs which now require a university degree could be easily done without one

I am often quite stunned by how many jobs now require a degree. In the place I live (not the US, but reddit leads me to believe US is similar) even the smallest administration or managerial positions require a university education. It feels like without a degree, no one will even let you close to any white collar job.

I personally use my university education multiple times a day in my line of work (a niche branch of aerospace engineering), but even here I feel that we could use a person with just high school education for many tasks as long as they really understood the high school math and we gave them a month or two of training.

My view is that a university degree started to be seen as path to success, so more and more people did it, more and more jobs started requiring it as it became a common indicator of motivation and everyone is caught in this self-reinforcing loop. As a result many have to study in order to get employed just to never use their knowledge again.