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.