Link n1 presents some interesting information: "The picture is a bit different at private schools, which do not receive state funding but have nonetheless seen

Link n1 presents some interesting information: "The picture is a bit different at private schools, which do not receive state funding but have nonetheless seen substantial tuition increases. At private nonprofit colleges, the spending categories described above — student services and faculty and administrative salaries — together explain most of the tuition increase over the past two decades." So perhaps this is a case of misattribution - you have people talking about the excesses of private schools in terms of administration and such, but the article is talking about public schools. Are people just talking past each other here? A good question to ask would be if we're looking at the same rate of student loans/defaults on loans. If students in private schools predominantly pay their loans, then this points to the reduction in state funding as the primary culprit, but it could be the other way around as well. There's also this: "Among for-profit institutions, it is much more difficult to pin down a reason for tuition increases, though recent research suggests that one big cause is the generosity of federal student aid: Some institutions may be raising tuition in order to capture as much government-backed money as possible." Since federal money and state money comes from the pockets of the same people, is it not reasonable to suggest that this "generous federal aid" is siphoning off resources into for-profits, where most of the tuition increase is "administrative bloat", instead of going to state-funded public schools, at least to some extent? One final thing - the article doesn't go into detail as to why state funding has decreased. Is it because the states have redirected education funding into other spheres, or perhaps that the states have to fund way more schools(per capita) than they used to? This is another missing piece of the puzzle.