University in Sweden is free for swedish citizens, it used to be free for foreign students as well, but since some years ago the universities are allowed to put fees on foreign students. Dont remember the exact details of how it works. Edit: looked it up, still free for people from EU, EES and Switzerland, and people living in Sweden with a resident permit.
We nagged our highschool around 97-98 until we got a programming course, we wanted c++ but the IT guy thought c++ would just be a fad, so we learned turbopascal.