College Tuition Insanity: Tuition Increases Outpace Inflation (a visual)

I just found a chart that shows how the price of college tuition has dramatically outpaced inflation, including health care costs.  I think it provides a great visual of what happens when market forces (such as the ability to discharge loans in bankruptcy) are completely removed from higher education and when student loans are passed out like candy on Halloween.  The chart seems to show a doubling of college tuition costs since 2000 whereas health care costs have only increased by about 53%. You can find it at the DShort blog.

Coincidentally, as tuition has skyrocketed, the value of a college education has plummeted.  It's too bad we can't quantify and plot the decreasing value of a college degree and juxtapose it with a plot of the increasing tuition on the same chart.  In the meantime our politicians and media pundits are still hawking higher education as a solution to our nation's economic problems and even people with Down Syndrome can go to college today.

This chart is from the DShort blog.