I believe it all started with my generation in the 1980s.
My parents’ generation made a good living without college; many people their age didn’t even graduate high school. Yet, they went on to build businesses and successful careers. Many men learned a skill in the military and then used that skill in their careers as civilians.
In my grandparents’ generation, many people didn’t even finish grade school, yet they went on to run businesses and/or buy and sell property. Many of them became wealthy.
Those were the people I looked up to. But, in the 1980s, more and more people started going to college. I ended up spending all my savings on part-time college for years and never finishing.
Now, it’s reached the point where everyone is expected to have a bachelor’s degree.
There was already significant federal funding luring students in then, but the big disaster began with the expansion of student loans to everybody for everything in 1991:
https://www.bankrate.com/loans/student-loans/history-of-student-loans/#basic-educational
And our peak year for enrollment was 2010:
https://educationdata.org/college-enrollment-statistics
And you’re so right, only about half of Americans were graduating from high school, at least nearly on time, at least through 1980 (now we’re up to about 80%), so even that level of education wasn’t usually required then:
(Sadly, the typical high school grad was better educated then than the typical college grad is now.)
