I'm not sure which community colleges you are going to. When my wife went to CUNY BMCC it was on the order of ~$2400/semester, so roughly $4800/year. Still not too unreasonable, but more than twice what you were saying.
Granted, this is NYC, not known for being super cheap, but I didn't think that CUNY was considered absurdly expensive either. Upon checking, the local community college where I grew up (the Orlando area) is about $1500/semester, so about $3000 a year, assuming you take summers off [2].
[1] https://www.bmcc.cuny.edu/students/bursar/tuition-and-fees/
[2] https://net1.valenciacollege.edu/future-students/financial-a...
https://www.dallascollege.edu/paying-for-college/cost-tuitio...
Even twice what I was saying is a pretty low amount compared to a private university at 60k/year.
I don't disagree with your thesis, regardless. If you do something with the CUNY system, you're still on the hook for <$10/year (at least for tuition, rent+food is a different story). A total investment of ~$50-60k total cost is definitely worth it from an economic perspective. With the exception of eccentrics like me, generally speaking the high-paying jobs are gatekept behind academia, meaning that the tuition would pay for itself within 2-3 years, easily.
It's not like I'm some hypergenius or anything (far from it), I'm just somewhat of a self-learner and tend to do alright in whiteboard interviews.
New grads are pretty undifferentiated except for university prestige so that's a rough time to compete if you're from a less prestigious school or no school.
a degree is fairly affordable in the US. you can do first 2 years at a community college for no more than $2k/year and then can do the last two at a state university for 9-20k/yr.
if you can get a degree that actually returns you money through an enhanced wage then you can pay that off no problem.