Also, speaking for my own family, my paternal grandparents married when they were sixteen and seventeen. They stayed together their entire lives.
Mine also married in 1933 when they were 16, and didn't finish high school. My grandfather worked hard, sometimes 16 hours a day, then finally landed a good job for a dairy company and moved up, raising four children, all of whom graduated college. As have their grandchildren.
They stayed married until my grandmother died in 2004.
While ostensibly "uneducated" in the high school graduation and college sense, they were highly literate, read books and newspapers and were very well informed. Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison come to mind as two writers of their era who likewise never went to college.
So, yeah, it was an era where college education was not required.
And I know several business owners in the modern era who likewise have only a high school diploma, or less, and are doing as well or better than others with college degrees. Brothers in arms with the Duck Dynasty crowd.
