Back on topic:

As a nation we already make primary and secondary education completely free. Additionally, we spend billions of dollars subsidizing tertiary education.

However under our current model, we spread those billions around in such a fashion that still leaves students figuring out how to handle the significant additional costs. This is in stark contrast to the primary and secondary model where we completely subsidize the public education and allow people to pay for private options if they so choose.

Economically, the amount of money we spend subisidizing private tertiary options could make public tertiary education completely free or significantly reduce the cost if it was re-allocated exclusively to public institutions.

This would then result in a model that parallels the primary and secondary model where public education is extremely low cost and private education is privately funded.

I've already posted links 2 pages ago with the 2012 financial numbers and a link to an article purporting to demonstrate how.

If college education is increasingly important for our society, and it appears to be so, there's little reason to not re-organize the financial model to maximize the societal access.