On the other hand, I grew up as an only child with my mom a teacher and my dad a factory worker. While I knew I wasn’t going to be homeless or hungry or put undue burden on my parents, college was solely a means (dual degree in computer science and mathematics) to be employable even though by the time I went to college I had already been programming in 65C02 assembly and some BASIC for six years and was learning 68K assembly on my Mac my freshman year.
But knowing C and how to bit twiddle definitely helped me get a job straight out of college - a week after I graduated.
I went to university while a number of kids I played football with didn't \1, the kind of event that prompted many to study law \2 and parallel that with art \3
\1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_John_Pat
\2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UKu3bCbFck
\3 https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/may/10/this-is...
University was free, rent was cheap, particularly in shared houses, and part time work abounded (I worked three months of the year in mining or agriculture).
Many of those at the time were idealistic to a degree, almost all wanted to better themselves in some way or another.