The bulk of my high school peers couldn't afford to go to college, the ones that could were on full ride athletic scholarships. This wasn't recent and it was harder to get in to colleges at the time, and Google wasn't as useful as it is today but thanks for the assumption. Ironically the State University was actually more expensive than where I ended up (and still is pretty expensive). I eventually ended up joining the military and after I was discharged getting a couple of degrees from a school a few towns over that I didn't even knew existed.