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