Who is going to hold the screws to them?  As it&#x27;s set up currently, costs have been rising for 30 years at insane rates.  I know I&#x27;m biased because I&#x27;ve been in Boston for quite some time (it&#x27;s probably different elsewhere), but all of the colleges in the area have been spending money on completely non-academic things.  Building elaborate new dorms &amp; cafeterias, immaculate landscaping, bringing in various pop stars for campus events.  None of it moves the needle on &quot;education&quot;, but it for damn sure enriches the colleges.<p>Speaking for my own alma mater, they spent $8m&#x2F;year to lure the president away from a California school, because he&#x27;s apparently very good at luring in sponsorships&#x2F;donations from alumni (I never really understood WTF that meant).  Then the college paid ~$10m for him to have a house in the &quot;hip&quot; part of the city.  On top of that, the university spent many millions building new dorms with sushi bars and excellent views.<p>The costs rose a steady 4-5% a year while I was there, and I believe it&#x27;s been at that clip for decades now.  Sure, you can make the argument that it&#x27;s to pay for their investments, but remember that the university also received in the neighborhood of $100m to rename an existing building on campus.  And of course don&#x27;t forget the monthly phone calls to solicit donations &quot;for the students of tomorrow&quot;.<p>Unfortunately I think that the idea of everyone feeling that they are &quot;above average&quot; feeds into this--kids who can&#x27;t afford it really, really want to go to this school.  And subsidized loans make it very possible for people to borrow $65k a year to do it.  It&#x27;s a vicious cycle, because as prices rise, the more it seems that politicians want to make it easier for kids to go to any college they want to.  Unfortunately I don&#x27;t really know of a good way to stop people from making dumb decisions.  There aren&#x27;t many careers that can pay off $150-$200k in loans in any reasonable amount of time, and I&#x27;m not sure that it would work out well for the government to step in and say that you can&#x27;t borrow more than $X for college from any source.