The high cost of college here is honestly more about amenities than anything else. Whenever the discussion of making college tuition-free comes up in the U.S., people nearly always point to Europe as an example of an area where free education is the norm. What few people tend to take into account, however, is that European universities are pretty no-frills for the most part. I personally enjoyed the bare bones approach to higher ed during my time studying abroad (no stupid residential education office to overcharge me for crap housing, no forced meal plans, buying textbooks at my discretion alone), but I know a number of people from my undergrad who would be utterly lost without the amount of hand-holding and perks (gyms, expensive facilities that almost certainly are underutilized, etc) that occur in American universities.
