I've seen a lot of terms used for social services: subsidized, covered, available by grant, available to those who qualify.
But I don't always see those social services tossing around the word "free".
Sure, sometimes there are "free haircuts for the homeless" or "free medical services for the needy", or "free help to apply for benefits", but generally in the context of entitlements, we're not freely bandying this word around.
It's not the only way we refer to these things, but it's an accepted one.
It works great at the ballot box too! "Vote now for your free stuff! Everybody gets more free stuff when they vote for me! Support the bill for free stuff!" Because if you called it "using other people's money", then the Ghost of Margaret Thatcher would arise and invade Puerto Rico.
While you're voting, consider whether you're in that hacker demographic that gets a chuckle out of the meme that says "The Cloud Is Just Someone Else's Computer."
I disagree with you, but I'm not discussing your value judgement, I'm discussing whether "free" is widely understood to mean taxpayer funded.
"Taxpayer funded" is a gross oversimplification, for any sort of government entitlement and college funding alike.
But anyway, I have seen students in college who were sent there by their employer. They work full-time, have families with young children, and they were expected to pick up several credit-hours to upskill. You've never seen a bunch of sleepier guys. A lot of people, sent by their employer picking up the tab, don't wanna be there, and it shows. They're really disengaged with the class, and that frustrates classmates and professor alike.
Then there's students whose parents paid for it, and family expectations on them finishing college so they get a "real job", or even support the parents and buy them a nice house soon.
Students who work their way through school adopt another distinct attitude. They will get tired too, but they make every credit-hour count. It's their own money and their own blood, sweat, and tears that bring them to the finish line.
There are students who apply for scholarships and get through college that way. There's all sorts of funding for scholarships: corporate sponsors, non-profits, churches, community-based organizations, philanthropic foundations. Someone came to speak at the fraternity meeting and she said she'd been awarded six million dollars in scholarships. I was unsure how you'd spend all that at a community college, but hey?
People who are spending, or supported by, other people's money spend it differently than if it were their own money in their own bank account with them watching the bills and transactions. The incentives are different. The risk/reward calculation is different. That's how it goes.