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The more "aid" is given, the higher price goes, because it removes market discipline from the providers.
When I applied to Columbia back in 1976, IIRC tuition and fees for the year, non-residential, was about $3000. My daughter goes there now. On an nonresidential basis, tuition and fees is about $43,000 (that's without books, without room and board). That's almost 15 times the cost in just over 30 years. What do you think is driving prices up at that rate? The CPI isn't moving anywhere near as quickly as that. They raise their prices for the same reason dogs lick their balls - because they can. People will scrimp and save and take out loans to send their kid to college (as my wife and I are doing, btw), and there are all sorts of programs to help them do it. Like most government programs, they have the opposite effect of what was intended - the availability of that money is an invitation to the colleges to raise their prices because there is more money available to them. So it gets harder to pay for college and requires more debt.
I'm not complaining - we could have insisted she go to a public university - but that doesn't mean this business isn't a racket.
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