To give you some perspective, as an American student in Canada I paid 4x as much as a Canadian and it was still a great deal for my family. I was able to graduate with no debts thanks to the low tuition and my very generous family.
The only way to get remotely affordable University education (as opposed to Community College aka College) in the US is to go to the university of the state you live in. This is not a bad option, but most state universities are middle tier, and a lot of people don't necessarily want that as their post-secondary experience.
I hate to nitpick because I agree with everything you said, but corporatism does not actually mean "rule by corporations" or a system where corporations are powerful. It's a economic system in which the economy is divided into various sectors by the state. It has more to do with authoritarian style governments (like Fascism and Absolute Monarchy) than it does with the kind of laissez-faire/neo-liberal model that has loosened regulations on corporations these past thirty years or so.
Again this is not a disagreement with your point, merely a clarification of terms.
EDIT: From Wikipedia "It should be noted that corporatism means different things in Europe and in the US. In Europe, corporatism refers at least in principle to the domination of the economy by the state, and the word 'corporatism' is obtained from the Latin word for 'body' indicating the belief that the economy should not be treated as something different from society and the state, but as one organ of a whole body. In the US, corporatism usually refers to the domination of the state by the economy, and the word is derived from "corporations", that is, a reference to big business which has enough power and money to challenge the state's political power. Therefore, what is understood by corporatism in the US and in Europe are in theory diametrically opposed notions."
That is why I was confused, because I learned the word in the context of study of European history