A common argument is that easy access to guaranteed, government-backed student loans is responsible for rising tuition costs. In other words, a persons ability to attend college is no longer directly linked to their financial ability to pay for it (up front), so why wouldn't the schools just keep raising tuition? The only stopgap in this situation is how deep a debt hole the borrow is willing to dig, and we've seen again and again that without some sort of push back, lots of people are perfectly willing to keep digging.
Because government (a) tells everyone that they need college, (b) works to make sure that huge floods of loan money are available.
How does the government tell everyone that they need college? I'm curious. Because last time I checked, there was only one group of people who tell others that college is required, and that group was People With College Degrees.