There's two things here. First, payment for the cost of education has two major parts: tuition, and state allocations to higher ed. When tuition goes up, it c

There's two things here. First, payment for the cost of education has two major parts: tuition, and state allocations to higher ed. When tuition goes up, it can mean that education costs have risen, that state allocations have gone down, or both. Although there have been some understandable increases in the cost of education, the main driver in the increase in the nameplate tuition is the decreases in state allocations. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-main-reason-tuition-is-skyrocketing/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m... Second, the nameplate tuition number that looks to have risen is not even the amount that most students pay, as most students get financial aid. The correct number to judge whether tuition has gone up is the Net tuition number. Most reports of the net tuition number show that it has gone up much much less than the nameplate number, but it's also not public in the same way. If we had an anonymized national database of net tuition paid by all students receiving any amount of a federal financial aid, it would go a long way towards improving the quality of the discussion around higher education costs.