[dredmorbius]

If by "historically" you mean over the past 1000 years or so (the first university was the University of Bologne, ~1088), then yes. Significant democratization of university education is largely a phenomenon of the post WWII era. In the US, the GI Bill. In Europe, various public funding mechanisms.

This democratization was controversial at the time, though it also coincided with the biggest boom in global wealth the world has ever seen. I suspect this is more correlative than causal, and is tied to the increasing energy available to world economies through fossil fuels. That said, technological increases supported in part by broader education have increased productivity ($GPD/GWh) as well.