I’d like to congratulate the brain trust at silicon valley for inventing public education and taxes
"Public education and taxes" (1) means everyone pays into the system and then people can enroll without any additional payment (or maybe with diminished additional payment).
You could also have publicly insured student loans (2), where the student pays tuition with a loan and then if they later default on the loan then the public eats the cost.
But this system (3) is neither. In this system, you get your degree and then you start paying for it when your income is enough to afford it. Importantly, if you never attain that level of income, the _University_ eats the cost.
System 2 can lead to ever-ballooning college costs concurrent with gluts of worthless degrees, because universities are incentivized to enroll as many students as they can at as high a tuition rate as they can - they always get paid.
In system 3, the university only gets paid if the student's degree turns out to be marketable. It (hopefully) keeps costs down in a way the (1 & 2) cannot. On the other hand, this could be terrible news for departments that issue degrees in literature, anthropology, etc.