It was just assumed that if your parents were above the "means" they would help out any way they could because that's what was expected of them as parents.
College was also seen as an enabler and not an expectation for my generation.
Or...if your parents spent all the college fund sending your sister to UCLA you could join the army and emerge as an "adult" so your parents' income wasn't taken into account and get grants and loans on top of the G.I. Bill.
I don't think my parents could've afforded to send my sister to Stanford back then which is roughly the equivalent to your average state school today (completely guessing here). They probably would've found a way though.
My point still stands though, means testing was intended to get the best and brightest into college even if they're poor, couldn't even imagine Reagan/Bush entertaining the idea of giving middle-class kids a free ride -- in fact I can even picture Reagan on the TV saying "Uncle Sam ain't your baby daddy!"
Note that the UK does exactly this, last I checked.
The US already does this for federal loans, though it's not the default option, and the servicer (Navient) has been accused of actively steering borrowers away from the option, because it hurts the value of the loan-backed securities that Navient sells.
This isn’t entirely true. Tuition aid for most students is based on the parents’ income. My parents are (and were when I went to school) upper middle class on paper. They have never been great with money, though, so they couldn’t cover tuition out of picket and hadn’t set aside funding in advance. They definitely helped with living costs but tuition was covered by loans (and scholarships partially). So I left with loans to cover virtually all of my tuition.
If your parents are middle class and can’t cover your tuition, you’re probably in a similar situation. Combined with a low-demand degree, this could easily result in crippling debt.
> The place where people get killed is when they go to a private school that is expensive and not particularly an academic standout
My sister did this. A couple of years at a private religious school before she transferred to a public school. The student loans from those couple of years are absurd and dwarf the rest of her loans. She’s still paying them off a decade later.