The USA has 4,000+ colleges, most of which do compete aggressively for students. Huge marketing departments with regional and national reach. Radio ads. Television ads. Print ads. Marketing networks with college counselors. Salespeople who spend many months attending college fairs. Fancy dorms and other amenities. Carefully crafted discount rates applied in a way that tickles the applicant's ego in just the right way. Beautifully crafted websites. Massive landscaping budgets, the bulk of which is spent during recruiting season. Expensive logos and mottos crafted by marketing firms that spend a lot of time with study groups. And so on. Higher ed marketing is a big industry in the USA.
Competition alone does not drive prices down.
> What happens when the government tries to provide for us... they gaurantee your student loan: Skyrocketing cost of school
Well, maybe the government should actually provide education instead of providing financial products...
On that note, both European higher ed and US K12 would like to have a word...
IMO the problem in health and education is that we can't stomach the massive inequalities that show up in free markets (healthcare: let people die; education: only the rich and a few lower-risk borrowers get higher ed), but also can't commit to just socializing the whole damned enterprise. We need to abandon our morality or abandon our aversion to socialism; until we choose one, we'll be stuck with these extremely suboptimal public/private "solutions".