Yeah... That's less than 8 weeks of work for all 4 years though, that's a good trade. You could work for one summer and pay for all of college, or work for each summer and pay for college, a car, some spending money and have stuff saved.
Vs now, where you can work full time all year and still be in the negative, by a lot. And of course if you do that then that's going to really hurt your studies.
Did… did you seriously type that out, read it, and then think to yourself “yeah, this is a good argument!” Before you sent it? Because if you did that’s the funniest thing I’ve read all month.
Except of course there were student loans. "Federal student loans were first offered in 1958 " - wiki. And before that the baby boom generation's parents had the GI Bill to get them through college.