Your framing is disingenuous. The amount we spend is declining, which creates an increase in price: https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/a-lost-d

Your framing is disingenuous. The amount we spend is declining, which creates an increase in price: https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/a-lost-decade-in-higher-education-funding https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/a-lost-de... >States provide roughly 53 percent of the costs of teaching and instruction at these schools. Schools have made up the difference with tuition increases, cuts to educational or other services, or both. >These sharp tuition increases have accelerated longer-term trends of college becoming less affordable and costs shifting from states to students. We spend so much because we refuse to fund things directly. By shifting costs onto students, prices go up for everyone. Then aid to students has to be increased, creating this cycle. If we fund higher educational institutions directly, we can reduce costs for everyone. >Over the past several years, public colleges and universities have cut faculty positions, eliminated course offerings, closed campuses, and reduced student services, among other cuts. The idea of relentlessly "trimming the fat" has eliminated all slack capacity in our society and economy, to our detriment. Ask anyone who incompletely copied the lean Toyota model and didn't allow for a stockpile or excess capacity where it was prudent to do so. We're delaying infrastructure projects that will only get more expensive to fix. We can't keep pushing these problems into the future and hoping we'll stumble upon a magic solution later. We're at the point where we need to make drastic changes because we've been collectively refusing to make incremental changes. We are an incredibly wealthy society. We can afford education and healthcare (very similar causes, very similar solutions) for everyone in the USA and we merely need to make the choices to do so.