“Free” is only slightly hyperbolic. My mother went to the University of Washington for her undergraduate studies in the 50s/60s and paid $25/credit for classes. She covered that, easily, by working part-time. No loans.

Yes, my dad was able to pay his entire way through university (tuition, housing, food, etc.) just with the money he made working part time at the university cafeteria

This is what happened in the UK, tuition was free until fees were introduced at the tail end of GenX (quickly abolished in Scotland, more or less). I don’t think it was ever “free” in the US but until recently (GenX again?) it could be covered by a summer job in many cases. Obviously now it is absolutely bonkers in the US, and as it stands the more elite universities in England, Wales and NI are rapidly headed in that direction.

not only tuition. In the UK, students got a grant to cover living expenses as well as free tuition. This ended in 1988 (incidentally the year I went to university), to be replaced with student loans. Boomers are the generation born from 1940-1965, so the youngest boomers turned 23 when the student grant system finished in '88. Exactly the age when a person in a four-year course (and a gap year) finishes university. It's not a coincidence.

Great point!

They didn’t get their education for free but compared to what people pay now it might as well be free. When boomers say they worked to pay for their education, they mean they took summer jobs washing dishes or waiting tables.

Try to do that today and you’d be washing dishes for the rest of your life and never pay off the student loans.

It's compounded by some people not adjusting for inflation. Education was still expensive back then, just not as expensive as it is now. It was also far less universal.

edit: "people" -> "some people"

edit 2:

Trying to reduce a complex situation quickly (so forgive oversimplification): for decades college education was a bargain, the lifetime value of a college degree (average increase in wages) was much higher than the cost of the degree. Ignoring the ethics and rationales for this, price rose to meet demand. At the same time, automation has reduced the number of jobs and the value of a college degree. It is an awful situation.

What I was trying to get across, using real numbers, is that Harvard tuition in 1960 was apparently $1500. Inflation figures would tell you that is 8x higher ($12k, affordable but still not cheap) in today's dollars. Actual tuition is $46k. But an average house was $12k in 1960 and so you'd expect $100k today on the same inflation rate. But it's $300k.

What you also have is an illustration of the stratification of society (lower/upper middle class gap) where "luxuries" like college, a house, or a car are tracking higher income growth and lower income growth is stagnating because of international and technological trade trends. This is well beyond the scope of this submission, so I'll cut myself off here except to say reducing this to "boomers" isn't helpful.

You’re right that it was less common to go to University but the rise in tuition has outpaced wages by an insane margin.

Edit: Apparently Wikipedia has an image that demonstrates this really nicely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_tuition_in_the_United_...

People are adjusting for inflation, but the rate of inflation on education has increased significantly without a stepwise increase in income or value from that education.

My dad payed his entire way through college with a part time cafeteria job and graduated with no debt. My tuition was over $50,000 a year and housing, fees, etc. was over $20,000. Even adjusting for inflation, he went to college for a tiny percentage of what it cost me

Housing and education have increased at 3-4x times inflation. Which is why you could pay tuition with a summer job, but now there is no way to do so.

no,in the UK, students got a grant from the government to cover living expenses. This was replaced by the current student loans system in 1988

I'm at the tail end of the boomer generation (although I prefer to think of myself as men-x). When I left school only about 7% of my cohort went to university. Most of us didn't get a free university education, we didn't get any university education.

https://www.aarp.org/content/dam/aarp/ppi/2019/05/a-look-at-... (AARP: A Look at College Costs across Generations)

My parents, and their parents, and all their university peers, got grants to cover all living expenses, and paid absolutely no tuition fees. That's more than free - they were basically paid a wage to be there! None of them worked as far as I know - it was seen as full-time education.

Boomer here.

An exercise for those who wonder: look at historical tuition + fees costs and the minimum wage at that time. As I recall, a summer of 40 hours per week at minimum would more than cover tuition at the University of Virginia in 1970.

So, no, the education wasn't free. But it was a lot more affordable.

It'd be the case for anyone in the UK where fees for education are relatively new. I'm making an assumption about the poster though. I paid a tiny amount in 1999 in the UK, but fees increased significantly since then. Your response is how I understand it to have been here in the US, but I suspect that the rate of inflation in the education market is much higher now than what "boomers" had to deal with. That doesn't change that they had to work during school or take on loans, but it did change their long-term outlook.

Another boomer here. I worked half-time throughout my undergrad and grad years, and full-time during the summer. Even then, I don't think I reached net worth zero until my late 30s or so. (This is with a solid tech degree.)

Well, I went to university in the UK in the 1980s and my education there for 4 years was completely free: fees were paid and I got a fairly decent grant.

I did work during the summer but focused on academic work (and other things...) outside of that.

In the UK, I'm ""genx"" and part of the last English (+) generation to both receive a student grant and not pay any fees, for a course 1997-2000.

(+) the Scottish system is separate and still subsidised

If not free, a fraction of what we pay now. I think it used to cost a few thousand for a degree, not the hundreds of thousands that some people have for a philosophy degree.

In NL they actually got enough money to live on while studying. I still got money while studying in the 90s too.