Free/easy money causes the price of assets to rise, as our Fed is demonstrating. Why would it be the opposite with education?
Tax benefits cut forcing more students to seek financial loans for student expenses. Conservatives further protect lending institutions (and punish students) by making student debt one of the forms of debt not clearable by bankruptcy creating an artificial safety for lenders. Student loans are now a low risk lending market so lenders relax requirements for loans. Now students have greater access to financial loans of larger size so Universities are able to raise tuition without impacting operations/enrollment.
This is obviously a contrived line of reasoning, but the point is that there is a complex interaction occurring resulting in what I (personally) would consider market failure.
The easy money of student loans is a federal program, not the state governments. And conservatives like it because then the big financial corporations that make student loans can make lots of money. And the more expensive education is, the more money they can make. So yes, conservatives think it is just great when higher education gets more expensive.
The opposed the old universities because they believed they were marxist. They like it that the new universities have become more expensive because that keeps people out of universities, or when they are in they enroll in business-oriented programs rather than the humanities, which are rather anti-business. They like it that universities have abandoned education in favor of entrepreneurship. And they like the student loan program because it helps universities be like businesses, and makes lots of money for financial corporations. Do you really disagree this is what conservatives think and feel?