You make many excellent points Andrew Tanner. I agree that the divide of education has contributed to the "spite" factor by a population felt left out. The result being today's affront to knowledge and logical thought.

The huge concern of university education is the run away costs of it. It's certainly overdue for a huge shakeup but having school fees picked up by government or whoever will not in itself change that.

Rather than university tuition to be paid for, it would perhaps make more sense to put cash directly into students' pockets (meaning basically everyone). Folks and families would then decide if they want to spend that money on further education. I UBI system if you like. Doing this more people would have an opportunity and it would encourage better results from schools for the dollars spent.

I recently wrote a piece "A Rental Moratorium -- and Now We Have to Clean up the Mess" which raises also the question of student loan forgiveness. I invite you to read.

Many thanks