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Just a reminder, free public college was the norm for a long time, and many people benefited from it before turning around and working hard to dismantle it. It's not some foreign concept. It's very much apart of America's history. The question we need to ask is whether it's a better system now than it was in the past, and I don't see anyone arguing that it's better now.

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Free tuition at public college might have been the norm; but not free room and board and books etc. Unless you could pay for all of that, there were also no guaranteed loans which meant that college was still unavailable except to the relatively wealthy.

This. Sending kids to public universities in the US has always been a big money issue for even the better-off parents (not elite), especially with more than 1 kid seeking higher education. It's definitely not just tuition. You have to enable 3 young adults financially like in my parents case. They had to juggle a lot to stay afloat! Thankfully I landed a great paying job after 2 years on the market and was able to help push my brother and sister through Arizona State, although we all picked up a lot of debt in the process though credit cards.

Institutions on a small scale a long time ago are not easily comparable to institutions means to serve a much larger fraction of a much larger population.

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