It’s true that yearly increases in college tuition have long outstripped inflation, rising more than 200 percent since 1980. But the conversation around student loan debt has become seriously miscalibrated: Not only do small, expensive, elite universities command the conversation about tuition costs, but there’s a misplaced focus on undergraduate degree programs.
There are real problems with America’s student loan system. But they mostly involve people who take on debt to pay for expensive graduate degrees.