"Free?" Yes... of course everything whose cost is thrown onto the backs of taxpayers is deemed "free" in socialist lexicon.
There was a local company here that famously had a fistfight break out amongst their engineering staff when the American engineers learned that their H1B counterpart had gotten his PhD 100% “free” in his home country, while they were each carrying $30-50K in student debt each on their Masters.
Those guys would likely vote for Bernie.