The problem is the mechanism of the government footing the bill that the US has chosen incentivizes the disgustingly high tuition rates: offering an essentially

The problem is the mechanism of the government footing the bill that the US has chosen incentivizes the disgustingly high tuition rates: offering an essentially unlimited amount of debt to all but the absolute most unqualified borrowers (the standard is "no adverse credit history," and given that the vast majority of borrowers have no credit, basically no one gets denied), who then spend the money at a third party who takes on none of the risk that the students won't be able to pay back the debt. The third party acts rationally, and drastically increases its price, then justifies the price by spending it on extravagant buildings, massive administrations, and high salaries for those administrators (my alma mater had a Dean, a Vice Dean, a Chancellor, a Vice Chancellor, a Provost, a Vice Provost, and a President, not to mention the Deans and Vice Deans of specific branches like admissions and financial aid, and to this day am unclear on the difference in all their responsibilities, since they seemed to be deployed at random in responses and school-wide emails), so that they can point to how expensive it is to operate a university. I'd be open to free education for all if the schools would pare back on administration and extravagance (since there's a strong argument that taxpayer dollars can be well-spent educating a workforce, but not a strong argument that taxpayers should be funding educations at the equivalent of an all-inclusive resort). I'd be even more open to taking the federal financial aid budget and distribute it to schools with a mandate that it be distributed in the form of grants and financial aid, so that in order to maintain their quality of life, they'll be forced to work to actually generated positive outcomes for all of their students, rather than following and promoting the successes and ignoring the rest.