[PythonicAlpha]

I live in Germany and from my experience, the system of free education worked ~40 years or more (not counting the last years, that we had those fees, which where invented I guess in the 90s or 00s). We had excellent education for several decades without fees and it worked fine, until the gvnmts (not only the German) got the idea, that there are more important things than education (for example military, big corporations and banks).

Of course you should not just "pay arbitrary amounts" to the universities but hold the people accountable for what they spent.