Bull crap
There are economic barriers in place that weren't around for previous generations.
You could work through college on a min wage job. Only students that had large debts were grad students. You had places like California University that were completely free in the 60s.
Don't you ever tire of posting this bullshit?
Generations, plural?
Did they stop teaching about one room schoolhouses?
Did The Great Depression not happen?
Hello World War II, Korea, Vietnam ... ?
Before the GI Bill it was predominately the wealthy that went to college.
I was the first college graduate in my family. My dad had gone for a semester but came home because his dad was ill and his mom was working three jobs to pay for college. His first job was as a repro man, stealing back cars for the fiance company he worked for.
I worked through HS when my dad got ill. There was no health insurance, government or otherwise, we paid our own way. If we couldn't afford it, whatever IT was, we did without.
My oldest sister got married out of HS. The second sister got a 2 year associates degree as a bi-lingual secretary from the Latin American Institute and she worked while going to school. I was headed to ND when my dad died my senior year of HS. With two small kids at home my career plans took a sharp detour. I stayed instate at a college wizards would scorn. Bottom line, it was affordable.
I worked 18 jobs while in college to pay my own way. I ran the student center, drove a beer truck, schlepped furniture for a moving company for a couple of summers and during semester breaks and graduated debt free. Of course most of my classmates didn't drive new SUVs and have $500 cell phones, today's bare necessities of life.
We didn't get free lunches in school, if it wasn't in the budget we did without.
My younger sister and brother also went to schools wizards would look down his nose at. Our mom died while they were both in school. They got jobs worked hard, perserved in school and at work and both graduated debt free and have 6 figure incomes today.
Yes, things were lower priced then probably because the minimum wage was under a buck and we didn't have to pay for everybody else's entitlements. We were entitled to what we earned.
And we didn't whine incessantly about what life being unfair, we didn't have time.