Black Americans in particular, Black women in particular, are really bearing the brunt of this student debt crisis. Twenty years after college, the average white borrower has paid off about 95% of their student loan, while the average Black borrower actually still owes about 95% of that student loan.
Having to pay for those things is a way of emphasizing that the workers who perform things things deserve salaries, that the resources used for those things don’t wink into existence via djinni wishes, and that all of it is, unfortunately scarce.
These things demand payment, there is no way around it. And schemes that hide the payment via tax revenue fool the dimwitted into thinking they can be “free”.