@Louis-1988:
Believe whatever you like.
I noticed that in all of this, you didn't address Riddler's very good point (which, as I was reading through this thread, was the first thing that I thought of, too) that making college and university more affordable and accessible to everyone is one way of lessening the income gap, which, in the current system, will continue to widen. The rich people will be able to pay all or most of their kids' college tuitions, so these kids who grew up from well-off families will emerge from college with little debt, if any, allowing them to accrue their own wealth faster.
Conversely, those from poor or even working-class families will, very often, have to take out student loans if they have any chance of being able to pay for school. Some fortunate hard-working students are able to get scholarships that cover a lot of it for them, but many more are not able to do so and either get stuck paying back their loans for years and years, meaning that they have far less income to put into the economy than they would if they didn't have to pay those, or aren't even able to get loans in the first place and may either end up having to go to a school that won't offer them as many opportunities as their preferred college, or won't be able to go at all. It doesn't help at all that financial aid offices are shit at figuring out how much of a student's tuition their parents/guardians can afford to pay. They seem to think that the parents will put every drop of so-called "disposable" income they receive into a child's tuition, when in reality, that's far from what anyone can actually afford to do.
And sadly, thanks to decades of racial inequality/inequity limiting opportunities available to certain racial groups, as the income gaps continue to widen in our current system, so too will racial inequities. Which is why it doesn't surprise me that many–not all, but many--of the politicians who oppose things like student loan forgiveness, more affordable education for everyone, and other policies designed to combat inequity happen to be rich white men. Many members of the group that has the most power and influence want to keep the power and influence however they can; they're not willing to share it and try to build a more equitable society, even though that would ultimately benefit everyone far more than it would hurt.
You used a personal example, so I guess I will too: I got almost none of my tuition paid for because the university assumed my parents were gonna be paying way, way more than they actually could. Fast-forward five and a half years, a bachelor's degree, and a master's degree later, and I now have six-fucking-figure debts of student loans to pay off. I do have a steady job, thank goodness, but a whopping one-third of my monthly paycheck has to go towards payments for those (while most of the rest pays for rent/other bills, the car, and living expenses like groceries), and will probably continue to have to do so until I drop dead of old age, especially since it seems unlikely that I'll be able to save enough to retire. Hell, until this COVID thing hit–during which time, interest on loans has stopped accruing and payments are not required--the principal for how much money I owed on these loans wasn't even decreasing at all, because every month, the money I paid would go towards interest that the loans had accrued over the previous month. Rinse, lather, repeat.
And I know that I'm still very lucky compared to many, because I had the chance to go to a great school in the first place even if I'm literally paying dearly for it now; quite frankly, as a white woman, I know I've had doors open and opportunities come my way that others simply have not. It's ridiculous, it should not be like that, and it sucks to think about how many bright, passionate minds out there must not be able to get the chance to pursue their dreams and talents simply due to the misfortune of being born into a life where they don't have enough money for it to be feasible. Making higher education more affordable and available to everybody, not just rich people, won't solve issues of inequality and inequity by itself, but it's one way to start lessening them.
EDIT: Basically, it's not going to suddenly mean "Okay, now everybody is gonna want to be a doctor and engineer!" That's not how it is right now, either. People will still want to go into fields in the arts, performing arts, humanities, etc., just as they do right now. It would just mean that kids who do want to do things like be a doctor or engineer or other stereotypically lucrative fields, but can't for financial reasons, are far more likely to actually have the chance to do so. Same for any college-offered field they want to study.