[Vigilanteman]

All this ink spilled and no mention of the most obvious cost of tuition inflation: The desire to soak up every available tuition dollar.

Track tuition inflation against any common commodity, the cost of a box of corn flakes, for example.

Anything between that steep rise in tuition and the more modest rise of a retail box of corn flakes is almost entirely due to the availability of easy loans and federal grant dollars.

Nobody but a fool leaves money on the table when it is there for the taking.

[Pecos]

A number of years ago, I enrolled a USC off-campus program in systems management, a multi-disciplinary Master’s Degree sort of thing. It was aimed at active duty service personnel using VA benefits. Each year, as the VA benefits increased, the USC tuition matched it dollar for dollar.

Shock, shock.

[Alberta's Child]

College costs have risen dramatically for the same reason health care costs and home prices have risen dramatically: because people don't behave as prudent consumers when they aren't paying directly for these things.

That's why the price of cornflakes fluctuates in a manner that reflects underlying supply and demand, but these other things do not.