It's been quite the opposite. College tuition fees has risen rapidly (as most other things have) but the middle and lower class wages haven't been keeping up with this trend. The middle class today is working more for same amount of money they made a decade ago.
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.
In the US, it was the G.I. Bill following the Second World War. That's how my other grandfather, the one who didn't go to The Cooper Union, went to college. He pre-paid with four years in the 504th PIR, from Benning to Berlin.
College has been accessible for many students for decades, especially state colleges. When I went to a state college in the mid-90s it was possible for my middle class parents to pay tuition out of pocket without going into debt. That's not really possible today except for trade schools or community colleges.
