It depends on the university and your goals, I suppose.

Many people are surprised to learn how affordable elite colleges are if you genuinely need financial aid. I had no idea -- was pleasantly surprised when my alma mater took over 80% off of my tuition.

Indeed, would the advice be good if university was free?

Where I live it's basically free and I still sometimes regret not going into the trades. But I suspect this feeling might mostly be a "grass is greener" thing.