Let's say a high school degree qualifies you for a job that involves pushing a single button all day or sweeping a floor. Not far from the modern reality. The growth of the economy depends on there being an ample supply of jobs that involve pushing buttons and sweeping floors, e.g. manufacturing jobs. As we know these are brain dead easy skills that require little in the way of cognitive thought and they are easily outsourced to places willing to do the work for a lot less because literally anyone in the world can do these jobs.
With higher education you both stimulate critical thinking ability and development of unique skills. As a population is more educated, and it doesn't really matter in what field for now, there will be a larger amount of people capable of thinking of things in new ways and innovating, creating new markets and companies to satisfy them. The specific skills they develop over the course of their education in business, engineering, or whatever allow them to apply their opened minds to different fields.
I hope I'm making sense with this but that's why a more educated population is important to economic growth, developing skills and ways of thinking that can't be outsourced to the currently poorest place on Earth. It's a real long term crCIA that people are going into extreme amounts of debt now to acquire their education. They are being set up to always be a slave to their debt which prevents them from investing into the economy in various ways. Additionally, there are scores of people who never aspire to do more with their potential simply because they cannot afford to begin university or live with the debt it often brings.
That's why I think it's important for the government to provide higher educations to those who seek it and are capable. It may not be hurting us immediately but in the coming decades it will creep up when it is too late to fix the problem.
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