Absolutely. There are some issues though with brain drain. Look at Germany, free education. Or Norway, you pay like $500 a year. I have friends who went to study there and then left and never came back.

And it's not inexpensive. Here in the Netherlands we pay about $2k a year on tuition, but the gov pays the uni an additional $10k or so per student. And then the unis get various extras from the government, so they have about $15-20k to work with for tuition per student. In any of these three countries, most or all of that comes from the government, who don't have a way of keeping that investment locked in to their countries.

Which is why a lot of countries nowadays keep tuition high, but create language scholarships. Study in Korea? Gotto pay up. Unless you want us to pay, great, we'll even pay you a monthly stipend, but you need to take this 4 year Korean language course and it's intensive, if you fail, you lose your scholarship.

4 years later, that person will be speaking Korean and tied to Korea for the rest of their lives. Even if they won't live their, they might go back to Europe and do business with Korean companies, make investments, etc. That's a much more sensible investment for them.

The second issue is that of cashflow. Investments are great, but paying $50k into an 18 year old, will start to pay off maybe a decade or two later in taxes on average. That's an easy decision for Sweden, it's a tricky decision when you're dealing with austerity measures, unemployment, failing healthcare, crime etc right now, something a lot of countries are facing.

But yeah beyond those issues, I'm damn glad I live in Europe, my education has been amazing. $10k student debt, got a 4y degree here, and did an exchange, a minor and summer school in 3 other countries (Quebec, too by the way :)!