It looks like the new movie "Ivory Tower" is yet another source of the incorrect information bombarding potential college students and their parents with the notion that college costs are rising much faster than inflation. At Ball State, it has clearly been shown that college costs are going down after adjusting for inflation. Of course, "cost" is not what parents and students are really interested in. They care about "price." The difference is state government subsidy for in-state students. The legislature has slashed subsidies, so the price is going up while the cost is going down. If you are looking for someone to blame, blame the politicians who want to cut your taxes and/or blame yourself for being unwilling to pay taxes that are lower than in any other part of the civilized world.
Politics, good financial decision making, and honest analysis tend not to go hand in hand. Folks got upset when prisoners were being given college educations for free, so we stopped educating prisoners. Now, they are just that much more likely to come back to prison when the get released. The net cost in real dollars: way more than the cost of a college education (not including the direct and indirect costs of crime, just the cost of keeping them in prison). Do basic math and make rational decisions instead of getting all worked up about how bad you've got it.
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