The price of tuition practically /skyrocketed/ after it become impossible to discharge student loan debts.
Worse we've had two recent 'recession' periods and had insufficient recovery since then. It is extremely difficult for those entering the workforce to find entry-level jobs, and the competition for those seeking part time jobs means anyone going to college is automatically 'overqualified' (source, my own personal experience; over a decade ago, and I DOUBT it's gotten any better since!)
This chart shows part of the story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_tuition_in_the_United_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:InflationTuitionMedicalGe...
"... All rates are computed relative to 1978. [51]
Cost of living increased roughly 3.25-fold during this time; medical costs inflated roughly 6-fold; but college tuition and fees inflation approached 10-fold. Another way to say this is that whereas medical costs inflated at twice the rate of cost-of-living, college tuition and fees inflated at four times the rate of cost-of-living inflation. Thus, even after controlling for the effects of general inflation, 2008 college tuition and fees posed three times the burden as in 1978."
I think a student from a middle class family (meaning loans and not grants) should be able to attend four years of an in-state college, get a full education, perhaps work a part-time job but also have time for the kind of valuable extracurricular activities that are a part of the college experience, and graduate, without going into an unreasonable amount of debt. But it sounds like the reality is that that amount of debt, for that scenario, has climbed quite a bit.