In early days, there were no existence of Universities and Educational Institutions. However, Guru's for certain competencies were widely available by whom youngsters used to take their early education. The ancient methodologies were followed like Veydic Mathematics, Medicines etc. invented by Monks and Guru's. We are aware of few inventors and Gurus, but most of them are unknown. Its been said that - whatever we are learning today is because of the hard work and great researches of them.
These small institutions where only for the children of the Royal Families and few common but rich citizen. Because of highly dominating but fewer rich population, common people were not allowed to leverage such facilities. They used to learn by themselves by experiences of their parents. But it is impossible to take up subjects like Maths, Science, Geography without someones guidance of course with few exceptions. So the questions was how could these common people have pass one the knowledge and inventions their predecessors?
May be when Acharya and Monks used to teach and preach their Royal and Rich students, the servants and concierges must be indirectly taking up lessons by hearing or seeing the subjects going in the classes. Consequently - this knowledge must have gained and transferred from Concierges to their kids and later to the rest of the underprivileged population.
Today, things have been changed. We live in a free country after collapse of all Kings and their Kingdom. We all live in era of technology and digital world. World class education is available at our finger tips. Almost everybody has the power of money and access to great libraries having tremendous verities of art and literature to such an extent that anyone can gain wast knowledge on almost any topic by ourselves. Every state of our county has at least one University under which has several collages and schools. Every class of the society has access to various schools such as - Government, Private, Autonomous institution with varieties of trained faculties.
However, still we have certain underprivileged population who are still struggling for Food, Education and clean Water. They are to be spent their entire life leaving in slums, foot paths, Railway and Bus stations. They are those migrants who opted or forced to leave their villages to move in closed cities. Non-Profit organization are providing help to certain extent to these families not only with education but also providing training and employment opportunities. The Men and Women go to work leaving there children behind with these NGOs and coping some how to live better life.
In total - whether it is early days or present, we all have to dependent on some thing to gain knowledge by means or institutions, library, parents, friends, colleagues, neighbors and society. Curiosity drives human being to learn no matter which ever the class, place they belongs to. Knowledge is within reach to everybody.