Tuition was as close to free as possible as spelled out in the Az state constitution.
In state students were almost a 100% certainty for admission - even if you had bed grades in high school you could attend on probationary status and get full admissions if you could keep up a good grade point average for a year or two.
If you were not prepared for university, two years of essentially free community college were available to get you you up to speed.
On the other hand, the course work was rigorous and intentionally designed to weed out students who could not make the grade as quickly as possible.
This changed with affirmative action when standards were dropped and accommodations were made to retain students who had no business being in college.
After 40 years of constant pressure to lower standards, you now pay an inflation adjusted 700% higher tuition to get a much less rigorous and often worthless education.
Some European countries have a model where the top 10% of high school classes may attend college for free. That probably better matches people who should be in college with the seats available.