Quote Originally Posted by VictorCharlie View Post
Your shucking and jiving here is amusing. The tuition graph shows roughly an 80% (I'm just eye balling it) increase from 2000-2007.The federal spending increased during the time period for loans, grants etc went from around 10 billion to around 20 billion. Now I don't claim to be smart enough to tell you what $1 dollar of subsidy does to $1 of price and I can't tell you exactly what percent the price of tuition is beating inflation by but those graphs show correlation between tuition increases and loan/grant money. You can argue that it isn't causation if you want but as of yet you can't back up your point with any correlation at all. State funding went down as a percent but up as an actual amount (237m- 318m). This point is some what moot b/c other means of funding went from 162 million to 1 billion. So whatever percent the state decreased by was more than made up for. At the end of the day it is a market that is highly subsidized and the price has beat inflation for a lengthy period of time. You can talk about other contributing factors till you are blue in the face but you can't ignore the role the proliferation of student loans has played in the escalating price.