>where is that money going? One place is that it is used to replace reductions in government support. "the single most important factor associated with tuitio

>where is that money going? One place is that it is used to replace reductions in government support. "the single most important factor associated with tuition increases was decreasing revenue from government appropriations, with state appropriations making up the majority of such revenue.[1] (this is an old study, but I believe the pattern still exists, and is even more exacerbated) Another seems to be that administrative costs are growing disproportionately at the same time that public money has been getting smaller. This seems to be aligned politically, so it may need to be taken with a grain of salt but I can give one anecdote. When I went to college, I was sent to see the veterans representative. At that time it was just a single person who had those duties tasked on top of her "real" role. Now, it's common for colleges to have entire admin teams to recruit and help veteran students. On one hand, this can be great for the colleges and students; if managed well, those students bring in "free" government money. On the other, it's probably hard to calculate the true ROI of such a team; for example, it may be hard to know how many of those student-veterans would have attended regardless if there was a full team to support them or not. But all those admin teams, across all the different groups and bureaucracies add up. [1]https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/2002157.pdf https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/2002157.pdf