You are right. Even in Colombia goverment pays for education. I assisted a great engineering university there for $150 bucks per semester. That's free if you ask me.

But you need to have exellent grades and pass a high school graduation exam with flying colors. Everybody wants to be admited to the public university but if you can't get good grades you'll be paying around $1500-$4000 in a private college and those actually suck.