Well that’s about the system in the USA or some third world countries. Locking higher education behind a paywall only helps to keep the population uneducated, combine that with no focus on critical thinking in school and you get a population that’s easy to control and to polarise.
Of course politicians like Trump (or pseudo-democracies or straight up autocratic regimes in third world countries) really benefit from an easily-convinced population that’s not questioning them too much, so, given how strong the republicans currently are, that sadly probably won’t change anytime soon.
At some point they’ll realise that they need free or at least very affordable education to stay internationally competitive…