In the article, I think the increase in tuition was pretty close to the increase in federal funds available for college education.
This gives us the worst of both worlds. Private entities freed from market pressures, but with none of the oversight or electoral accountability that comes with the public sector. This, in a nutshell, is what the common citizen is really angry about. This is what they elected Obama to change, but it is looking like he is only willing to address this problem at the margins.
But I shudder to think how much worse off America and the entire world would be without the U.S. government helping people go to college.
The GI Bill after WWII gave an entire generation of veterans a free college education. Before then, going to college was just a luxury for the rich, pretty much everywhere in the world.
Government aid to college students makes America much stronger because an educated workforce is one of they keys to economic growth. Cut that and we're mortgaging our future.
The problem is that the correlation between cost and quality of education has broken down. The government spends ever more money on education, with little net increase in the amount of educating because universities simply raise prices for the exact same product.
If the money is going to state schools where the government also gets a say in tuition costs, that's one thing. But government money going to private universities simply transfers public money into private endowments with little or no public accounting.
But note: "More importantly, the estimated net price -- what the average student actually pays after accounting for financial aid -- was much lower, at about $1,620 at public four-year colleges, and under $12,000 at private ones. Both figures are higher than last year but still lower than five years ago, thanks to recent increases in financial aid both from the government and from colleges themselves. The figures do not include room, board and other living expenses." As long as colleges appear to offer out-of-pocket prices that are substantial discounts from list price, many students will continue to think that they are getting good value for their money--as perhaps they are. The challenge for a hacker is to offer plainly better value for even less money.