1. state budgets for universities are cut for political reasons not having much of anything to do with the university itself. budget shortfalls must be made up from other sources, primarily from tuition increases.
2. increased student enrollment due to increasing economic and social pressure for people to get a college degree. more students requires more facilities and more staff, which requires more funding.
3. natural aging of physical plant of university facilities, combined with other long-term maintenance costs (pensions, for example) that have historically been underfunded and now need more funding.
4. a price spiral relationship between availability of student lending and tuition costs. tuition costs increase so student lending amounts increase so tuition costs increase etc.
5. real actual greed. this isn't universally true but it can't be dismissed. some universities will just raise tuition simply because they can.
Increasing Fed subsidies tends to de-fund Colleges at the State budget level..its very counter-in-thinking as the more Fed subsidies the greater the student enrollments..
Thus if the Fed decreases student subsidies student enrollments will decrease and thus serve to reverse de-funding colleges at the State level..
ITS NOT ANY INDIVIDUAL BUDGET ITEM FOLKS..that is an illusion
We aren't frivolously spending money. We raise tuition because the bills have to be paid.
The ballooning of the 'administration' staff at my wife's university over the last 20 or so years is the same type of staff explosion seen at larger public companies. Except that those companies are responsible to share holders, and thus constrict when profits cannot be maintained. Whereas the University can forgo layoffs by increasing tuition, and know that the federal (and private) loan system will fill the gap. I cannot remember there ever being even a 2% layoff of staff at the university, let alone something you'd see from MS/IBM/etc.