If you try price-controlling schools you wind up with distortions that would lead to highly unpopular consequences in a few years.
Few would connect the two, and the connection would be denied or avoided by most: We'd have popular causes inexplicably but entailing unpopular consequences, which is the intellectual space much of the electorate dwells in.
Restrictions on who can get loans will be billed as great, since it will primarily protect the poor, meaning a disproportionate number of blacks and Latinos. In a few years they'll look back and say, "Ah, whites and the not-so-poor disproportionately get student loans. This entire idea was racist and we must liberalize loan criteria." It's what happened with house loans in 2009-2014. The period 1990-2002 was summarized in much shorter time.
There are many reasons college should cost that much. Parents and students demand a certain level of comfort. We have wellness centers, and they cost more; at one point a lot of large tuition increases covered providing of health care, and when I was in grad school there was an extra bump as student health expanded to cover reproductive health care and increased counseling. Professors demand COLAs and merit increases. IT isn't cheap. Libraries, real or virtual, are expensive. Lab equipment and supplies aren't cheap. As they expand to offer new majors or provide new research space, they have bonds to pay off. They have to replace infrastructure as it ages. And a lot of tuition goes to pay for financial aid that's not loans--the stuff we don't hear about because it's not bad news. Some increases are because college tuition includes more; in some cases, how cost increases get passed along looks different depending what side of the line you're on.
Faculty are no more productive in teaching than they were 50 years ago. But in many ways their salary is more unequal. Let's say you and Prof. X each get a 5% pay increase. You make $20k. She makes $60k (but hey, she's just starting). You get $1000 more per year, $21k/year. She gets $3000, $63k/year. She got a greater, but identical, pay increase. It works out to mean that tuition increases to account for inflation will be bigger than your pay increases to account for inflation.
We focus on things like chancellorial pay. If UCLA's chancellor got no money for his work, tuition/fees could be reduce a whopping $10/year/student. That's $3/term. But somebody would have to do what he does, or they could forgo representation at the Regents, fundraising that brings in far more than his salary, or representation at state and regional meetings.
Even Title IX in athletics was spendy. A lot of men's sports teams were popular and alumni demanded them. So did students. Title IX required at first equal $ spent on men and women. So there was some redistribution, but more money put into sports. Then it required equal bodies. That required more outreach, and ways of making it more attractive for women to participate. When I was in grad school, they added showers, trainers, more coaches, free towel service to help encourage women to participate. It flopped, but they spent the money to try.
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