Part of the reason those large "essentials" (college education is not essential!) have become so expensive is that people have been willing to pay more and more for it. The supply of these is not increasing fast enough to keep up with demand. US population in 1970 was 205 million. Today it's 327 million. Nowadays around 30% of the population has a college education, in 1970 that was 10%. 70% of students that graduate high school go on to college nowadays. It used to be 50%.

People have more money available, the resource is scarce, and the bare minimum to live costs less. This means that people are willing to pay more of their income and these people end up taking up the supply.