Tertiary education is quite expensive in Norway, the bill is just footed by a different entity.
Alternative view:
The majority of Americans have not graduated from a 4 year university, and the majority of the benefits accrue to the graduate, who tends to be more well-off than average. So, government-financed university is a regressive measure, and there are other, more equitable ways, of the government spending its money (hiring better primary and secondary school teachers, which almost everyone uses, for example).
The option we have now, which is low-interest loans backed by the US government, is a pretty good solution.
There are a large number of scholarships for gifted kids from lower classes. The US is extremely good at Hoover-ing talent, regardless of economic class, across the entire nation, and placing it in high-value economic clusters.
If there's something where we suck when it comes to university, it's telling upper middle class kids that they need to go to an out-of-state university and accumulate tens of thousands of dollars in debt for a crappy degree, otherwise they won't become a complete person. Most UMC kids don't do this, but there's some.