This one's easy. It's obviously the availability of cheap money (loans) that has caused the price of college to go up. Just like homes and cars (which are equal

This one's easy. It's obviously the availability of cheap money (loans) that has caused the price of college to go up. Just like homes and cars (which are equally ridiculously priced), we can only afford them because they are comparatively leveraged. If people had to pay out of pocket for these things, you can bet they wouldn't cost nearly as much. If you can tack an additional X thousand dollars onto the price and only affect the payment for the item marginally, you can bloat pretty damn quickly. That said, the quality of these things might also go down, but I have a hard time believing our elders got a comparatively worse education/home/car, adjusting for technological advances. This may be a ridiculously sweeping statement, but I truly believe consumer credit is one of the worst inventions of the modern era, and has drastically reduced quality of life across the board.