In no place university education is “free”. There are different ways it’s funded, but someone pays for it one way or another.

Everyone understands this. People say free, as in "free at the point of use/consumption"

I think it's somewhat disrespectful to assume other people don't understand a pretty elementary economic principle

Maybe, but paying your taxes doesn't put you in debt for decades.

This argument is old and outdated, In the US we pay high taxes similar to places with "free" services.

The US just spends it on foreign governments as opposed to its own citizens like Europe does.

And then lets the services like health care, prison and education be butchered for profit (that doesn't come back to the public good but feeds inequality)

The U.S. doesn’t spend most of its budget on “foreign governments”. The reason public services in the U.S. are so bad despite such high taxes is extreme inefficiency.

If we’re talking about an individual’s ROI ( as the article does ) without taking into account the overall economic benefits, then why isn’t it fair to call something free if an individual doesn’t have to pay for it themselves?

But the cost to the service user is what has bearing on the ROI calculation for those individuals. Different organisational funding systems have different interests.