[defrost]

Much of my generation (hitting their twenties in the 1980s) went to university if they had the interest and Tertiary admissions scores over the threshold.

University was free, rent was cheap, particularly in shared houses, and part time work abounded (I worked three months of the year in mining or agriculture).

Many of those at the time were idealistic to a degree, almost all wanted to better themselves in some way or another.

[JustExAWS]

Well, my still living parents grew up in the segregated South in the 40s-50s. There was no “idealism” about why my mom and her 3 sisters went to college and her brother went to trade school. They knew that college was the only way out, their parents were already struggling and they had no choice but to go to a “Black” college (now HBCU) because they were not allowed to go anywhere else.

On the other hand, I grew up as an only child with my mom a teacher and my dad a factory worker. While I knew I wasn’t going to be homeless or hungry or put undue burden on my parents, college was solely a means (dual degree in computer science and mathematics) to be employable even though by the time I went to college I had already been programming in 65C02 assembly and some BASIC for six years and was learning 68K assembly on my Mac my freshman year.

But knowing C and how to bit twiddle definitely helped me get a job straight out of college - a week after I graduated.

[defrost]

It would seem that some benefit flowed from the pragmatic idealism of the likes of Alexander Crummell and others that worked and fought hard to establish HBCU's.

I went to university while a number of kids I played football with didn't \1, the kind of event that prompted many to study law \2 and parallel that with art \3

\1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_John_Pat

\2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UKu3bCbFck

\3 https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/may/10/this-is...