Just to minimize speculation, this link has the numbers:
https://www.valuepenguin.com/student...ost-of-college

To summarize:
Public 2 yr public 4 yr public out of state Private

Tuition $3,570 $9,970 $25,620 $34,740

This is the average annual tuition across the country, not including anything else.

The link also has a graph that compares average tuition over the years, showing a steep increase, but it doesn't say whether the dollars have been adjusted to present-day to account for inflation (I'd assume they are, based on prior research, but not gonna dig it back up).

In my personal experience, a lot of kids thought any degree would be a free ride and in high school and college the value of the trades were greatly diminished. As a civil engineer it was pretty normal to meet a plumber or electrician who was making more than me and quite honestly, I thought their jobs required more critical thinking than most of the non-engineering classes I took in college (I do a lot of my own electrical and plumbing). But I digress...