Its even more stark when you look at University of California. My first year at UCI in 1990 tuition was $80, 5 years later my last year of tuition had leaped to $10,000. By the time all my student loans were paid I had paid off $750,000, there's a lot a person could do with that money. Baby Boomers with their $80 a year tuition were able to buy homes, invest in the market. There was a decision made in the 90s to transform education from an investment in society from the top down to a system of indentured servitude.

Wait, how do five years of University at a price of $80 - $10000 a year add up to 750'000. Because that is a huge number.

Really, UC tuition was essentially free before 1990? I had no idea. Is that true?

>> "College education was something only upper class folks could receive ... due to it's expense."

> "This is not factually correct - tuition at non-state schools increased 10X in the last 30 years, way ahead of the pace of inflation."

You are only considering the monetary cost of college which has, indeed, skyrocketed.

However a more significant cost in the era you are both speaking of was the cost of not working immediately after high school - especially when that same social class very likely had started a family, or had a family they were coming from that needed support.

People coming from a high SES background could afford four years of non-earning, etc.

Part of the reason it exploded though is there seems to be a bottomless supply of student loans, I am guessing because of how hard they are to forgive unlike regular debt. So many teenagers are encouraged to borrow whatever the schools ask by virtually everyone they know so that they can get their degree, and lenders will gladly give them 30k a year to study zoology or some other field with a rough job market.

The result is college is more attainable to people across the social stratum. And then degrees are less rare, commanding a lower premium while the people holding them have more debt.