Memes

I could argue this, I am Swedish and we have "free education", you only have to pay living costs and we have a really good deal with CSN loan that has the lowest rates in the country and you only have to pay back when you are employed.

But to the point, about 70% of the students leave because it's not for them. Either they change program (packages of classes) or just drop out.

But I think the strength of not being an uninformed country is before collage, we learn about politics and it's structures, how to vote and stuff like that in the gymnasium, it's like Highschool. Not sure how your highschool works but in gymnasium you pick a "program"/major, example "Physics, Electric, Economics" and stuff like that, and it's focused on that with added basic lessions, so it's sort of like Collage in US but at an earlier age. Most does not go to collage/university since gymnasium is usually enough.

Edit; If we look at the demographic of "SD" (Sverige Demokraterna) an extreme far right party in Sweden, its a clear connection that they never finished gymnasium or that they dropped out. (Highschool drops out), but they also only had roughly 11% of the votes of the total population.