What you're referring to were societal/cultural issues and artificial limitations to education. I'm referring purely to the quality of higher education for the

What you're referring to were societal/cultural issues and artificial limitations to education. I'm referring purely to the quality of higher education for the price that was paid. Accounting for inflation, in real terms the price that was paid for college was a small fraction of what is being paid today. And anyone (who was not subject to artificial limitations on access) could pay for it in a very reasonable amount of time and not go into debt by working, as I showed in that link, ~250 hours a year at minimum wage to pay tuition - tuition assumed to be for one semester, not two - so double that to ~500 hours a year at minimum wage to pay for the whole cost of that year's tuition. That's extremely affordable and no one had to go into debt to do it. In fact my father did exactly this in the early 80's. He worked part time and went to school and had no debt upon graduating.