Dumb Trump supporters raise mortgage rates, reduce money for Social Security and Medicare, and Make America A Laughing Stock.
I don’t think it’s particularly complex.
They captured state houses and gutted state budgets for direct funding to universities. Simultaneously, democrats tried to make up the difference at the national level by pushing for and getting pell grants, which are dedicated grant funds. This means there’s a dedicated amount of federal funds on the table every year, which mitigates against the market forces that would otherwise push tuition prices back down.
Students are then encouraged to take personal loans to cover the manufactured shortfall. Students can’t discharge this in bankruptcy, which encourages bad lending practices.
Almost all of this is very normal cause and effect with plenty of analogous historical examples, so even if we the idiot people don’t get it, you can be pretty sure that our highly educated and wealthy elected officials knew exactly what would happen.
If this were all too confusing or complex to know the outcome, then at least some of the time we’d see benefit randomly go to the individual. But it doesn’t, ever.
You know what would help with rising costs and increased enrollment?
Not eliminating funding.
Let me clarify. It is complicated - there are a lot of moving parts, as you say. But again, that is 100% design choice.
Complexity means that there’s some level of uncertainty. I don’t believe that there’s any uncertainty with how we have structured education. It works consistently to force individuals to shoulder the burden, while providing benefit to the people who need it least. If you implement these policies, you’ll get the same outcome every time.