The beauty of the GI bill and the commitment to affordable college through the 70s was that you didn’t have to be exceptional. Ordinary people could and did get educated and moved into the middle class by the millions, a middle class which was broad and deep. More tax revenues, less government aid. A workforce which made undreamed-of technological/scientific/medical leaps. A country which led the world for 30 years in just about every metric you can think of. That’s back when we believed education was an investment, not “wasteful government spending.” We haven’t been the same since we changed our minds about that.
Even back then, not everyone went to college. Many people went to vocational school, or directly into the workforce. But we are ALL better off when the population is more educated, rather than less.