As long as the government continues to give people loans (ie demand side) rather than directly provide a competitor to schools (ie supply side), the price will continue to grow.
This makes me doubt the theory that government loans are behind high tuition.
I think there are just too many counterpoints for the student loan thing to be accurate outside of a vacuum.
Loans help increase the cost of schools with lower social economic status (middle class) schools like state schools.
Loans allowed many schools to charge private costs for public education. Professor salaried have risen, cost structures are too high to support unloaned demand.
This is untrue. If anything, the rapidly growing pool of poorly paid adjuncts has lowered the median salary. Perhaps you could take a look at this book for a deeper understanding of the issue.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/04/16/herb-childres...
No other metric matters.
The cost has to come down, and that includes the cost of instruction etc.
That’s simply not true. The vast majority of the increase in cost is due to the explosive growth of non-teaching administrative staff.
When wealthy donors earmark their gift for a new library or sports complex, it’s the students who end up paying for all of the staff to maintain the building and run the programs.
That said, its not really the only metric that matters, but it does matter a lot. And it matters a lot more than all other metrics around cost because you can easily reduce those other metrics if they are truly bloat.
Professor salaries cannot easily come down, and you cannot easily add more kids per class.
Good professors pay for themselves by bringing in grant money.
With a positional good, demand can never be really satisfied, because everyone always wants something further up the chain, so prices expand to whatever people can possibly pay.
The economic effects will be more indirect than the last one. Folks will delay homebuying, they will have fewer children later in life. Schools and Colleges will be competing for fewer people. Many small liberal arts colleges will close.