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The one meaningful thing the federal government can do in this regard is to stop guaranteeing loans, which essentially hands colleges a blank check to charge as

• sn0w_crash 4y ago
  This will never happen.
• lapcat 4y ago
  Colleges never did and never would assume risk. Tuition must be paid upfront, or you don't get to attend class. The issue is whether the student loan risk is taken by the federal government or by the banks. Banks take risk, colleges don't. It's not clear, however, whether the removal of loan guarantees would reduce tuition, or whether it would just reduce the number of students who attend college. That depends on how the banks evaluate risk, and how much interest they get to charge. The primary factor that kept tuition in check in the past is that state universities are run by state governments, and an overriding goal of state universities was to provide access to those universities to residents of the state. This is why in-state tuition is typically much cheaper than out-of-state tuition. However, in recent decades, state government support of state universities has waned, and the overriding goal of providing affordable access has fallen by the wayside. The same factors do not apply to private universities, of course. But state universities are competitors to private universities, so the tuition at state universities provided some check on private university tuition too.