I am beginning to believe that the root cause of tuition costs in the US exceeding inflation is based much more on FOMO on the benefits of college education rather than federal government guarantees on student loans.

My claim is that buyers (parents+children) of college degrees are maybe not behaving rationally with respect to cost.

High-cost schools position themselves as offering a "better" outcome or opportunity to students. I'm really conflicted about this viewpoint. I have two children in high school with one a rising senior. So my family is discussing colleges and college costs somewhat regularly. We have visited a small number of state schools and a small number of smaller private universities and colleges. The smaller schools do a VERY good job of selling extra opportunities easily available to students. My experience is that opportunities can be found by a motivated college student at any institution but the small private schools seem to make it almost hard for a student to NOT be involved in meaningful outside-of-the-classroom options.