Of course, what you’re paying for isn’t just the classroom experience. It also includes things like official documentation that you’ve learned the requisite material or jumped through the requisite hoops; access to laboratory equipment, libraries, experts in your field, and other resources; and quite possibly other things that you’ll never benefit from—all depending on what school you’re going to. (If you want the best possible classroom experience for your money, look for the colleges or universities (or departments thereof) that emphasize quality teaching, which a community college might do moreso than a prestigious university.)
I guess it’s also worth commenting that the national average “inflation” rate is, in fact, an average. There are some things – like medical costs and education costs – that go up faster than the inflation rate, for reasons suggested by others. There are other things – like, say the price of cellphones and technological stuff – that tend to actually decrease in price over time (last year’s wonderful new innovation sells for less this year, f’rinstance.)
So, an average is just an average: not everything increases by the inflation rate.
Good point, and the inflation rate usually sticks with consumer goods, not the type of things that a college is likely to buy. It’s unlikely that a consumer would buy a single one of the desks used in new classrooms, let alone hundreds of them. Same for equipment, furniture for dorms (which have to be much more sturdy than what you put in the homes), dorm maintenance (like when students jump on a bathroom sink and break it off the wall), and so on.
There’s another huge reason why college tuitions are going up faster than other costs.
First you have to realize that student tuition is just one revenue stream to a university. In the “golden” sixties and seventies, state schools were very, very cheap for students because a lot of state money went to them, subsidizing costs.
The amount of government subsidy they are getting is going down. As states tighten their belts and more places concentrate on K-12 education, universities get a smaller piece of the pie. This shortfall in state spending is made up by charging individual students more.
That’s why tuition is going up at non-prestige schools that will basically accept any student that has a pulse. The Indiana-Purdue University at Fort Wayne and Savannah States of the world.