Not that many decades. For example, I was an undergraduate in 1988-1992. I never had any student loans nor did my parents pay for my tuition. They made it a point of principle that we pay for our education ourselves by working part time, as they themselves had done. But that just isn't possible today. When I went to (public) university, the tuition was under $2000/semester. These days it is over $10000. Wages have gone up since then, but not 5X.
IMHO since removing the gold standard (1970s), this problem came up. I'm glad you have been able to but that possibility was shrinking every year. Less and less people were able to do what you did, starting in the 70s. Financial college administrators kept up with inflation whereas jobs didn't. Income didn't. Expenses took a little time to catch up with inflation as well. So, that might've been why for your situation. It wasn't extremely prohibitive but the issue compounds every year.
