>>>By the time I started paying in the mid-80's, inflation had rendered my payments negligible. I think I paid a total of about $150 a month for four years' worth of loans.
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>What I see is that we enjoyed affordable tertiary education and huge property inflation and now in multiple nations we seek to pull up the ladder to lock in our gains for the benefit of our own children. Meritocracy is replaced by aristocracy and inherited privilege. E.g. this 2014 paper confirming that poor kids who do everything right shouldn't expect to do better than rich drop-outs:
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>http://www.bostonfed.org/inequality2014/papers/reeves-sawhill.pdf

Yep, I see it, too. My Ivy League tuition in the mid-70's was around $5K per year (without room and board-I commuted). When my youngest started college 30 years later, tuition plus room and board was around $40K. That said, many of those top-level schools are actually doing a better job of being affordable because of the combination of need-blind admissions, need-based financial aid, and a move to grants-only aid. When you check the online calculators for actual out-of-pocket cost, some of these schools come out much lower than mid-range schools. Some of them (like Amherst, where my older son went) are even working pretty hard to find kids who wouldn't ordinarily apply to such schools and then given them the supports they need to succeed.

Tamar