The simple and honest answer to your question is greed. The fact is that the USA has more than enough money to support a healthy and well-educated population th

The simple and honest answer to your question is greed. The fact is that the USA has more than enough money to support a healthy and well-educated population through government-funded healthcare and education (including what you asked about - higher education), but the capture of significant portions of our government by corporate interests has successfully stopped that kind of progress from occurring so that an ever-shrinking number of people can become unfathomably wealthy. This has been accomplished primarily through the use of emotion-based propaganda over a series of decades and has been incredibly effective at poisoning the national discourse.