Might want to make clear that those numbers are in thousands:  8.5 million people enrolled in fall of 1970 and more than 20.4 million in fall of 2009. 

It seems like those 1970 vs 2009 statistics should be times a thousand.

An increasing number of people attending college might explain the conclusions of the Rutgers study (well, that and the recession I guess). Perhaps, the more people have a degree, the less that degree is likely to assure them a stable and well paid employement. What doesn't make sense is that the costs of education are getting higher. The price of education should follow what education can give to somone.

Nice post; thank you.

Reporting on higher education is highly problematic, for one because the system is changing in many ways at once, as you indicate.  But perhaps more importantly, it's a complicated system without any clear norms.  

That is, when people talk about "higher education" in America, they are talking about Harvard University and University of Massachusetts and Oberlin College and Cleveland State University and Devry University and California State University LA and Brandeis University and University of Montana and the University of Phoenix and the US Naval Academy and so on.  

Few discussions of global trends in higher education take account of this diversity.  It's also a competitive system:  institutions compete not only with peers to attract top students and faculty and financing, but, at the margin, they compete with very different types of institutions (i.e. research universities with four-year colleges with community colleges, private non-profit with state with for-profit, etc.).  So it doesn't make sense to use language or concepts that tacitly assume some centralized decision-making control.  Trends that are common to all of higher education speak to broad changes in society, and responses to them.

Failure to acknowledge these points makes me think that much editorialism on the subject is really about culture war -- reducing the status of academics and/or education credentials and/or the directions of modern academic inquiry -- than about making progress.

This is so hard to believe... I graduated 3 years ago; during my time at a private college tuition went up about 6-10% every year. Friends at UC schools had their tuition go up 32% in 200...9 I believe? And then 10% every semester from then on.

Is it that college was too cheap for too long and now it's approaching its actual value? That seems hard to believe as a degree means much less than it used to, perhaps because so many people have them now.

Maybe it's a free market response to too many people getting degrees - it gets more expensive, thus shutting more people out... I guess a degree is only meaningful if it's scarce, like any other commodity. It's just weird, because usually when something's value decreases, its price decreases, not the other way around. 

This way seems like some kind of strange social engineering. Feels like it's not economics, it's a way to keep poor people from getting educated thus competing for higher paying jobs, thus keeping them middle/lower class or something. That's hard to believe (who is this shadowy figure controlling education prices as a means for class warfare?), but...

I don't know. It's just weird.

Your statistics, as other people noted, are incorrect. 
Likewise, they don't add up to what you state above. It says within the last decade it has risen 100%; yet, the amount of students rising is over the last FOUR decades. What did it rise in the last decade.
This is misleading. I think most likely it is a combination of these things and not just one factor. Because none of these things, including the rise in students in college as you posit, could account for it alone based on your own statistics.

Yeah this isn't a great comparison. You're graphs look at 1999 vs the present and your last number given is 1970 to the present. To compare apples to apples: 

In 2000 15,312 students enrolled in college compared to 20,428 in 2009. That's a 25% increase. So if debt has doubled in the last ten years but student loan population has increased by only a quarter, quick assumptions would place rising costs as responsible for half of the loan increase. 

As others have mentioned there are a lot of variables to take into account. Types of schools being a major one. I'd be curious to know about the rise of for-profit colleges and how they correlate. 

If you look at constant dollars, then the levels look like they remain fairly flat overall on a per borrower basis.   That's not too bad given costs have rapidly increased.

http://completionagenda.collegeboard.org/recommendations/7?quicktabs_1=1&indicator=79

I don't even understand the reasoning... why would more people enrolling in college increase the average college debt? Can someone explain this to me? (and yes, the comparisons are off given 1970 vs 2010 numbers)

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the post and chart, but collective student debt is now over 1 trillion dollars with a T, not 100 billion.

We're organizing a student debt refusal.

I have to echo some of the other comments here. There is a lot wrong with this post and it needs to be re-written.

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In New Zealand something similar is happening. Tertiary education used to be free until about 1989, then cost around $100 a year. Now I am paying $8,000 a year. My loan is around $40,000 and I've only just started my postgrad (because I couldn't get a job with my undergrad). The current student debt is $12billion (for a country with a population of 4 million)

In the meantime, the prime minister (John Key the multi-millionaire) are increasing the repayments to 12% if you earn over $19,000 a year (that's below the poverty line mind you). Also, there are cutbacks to those allowed student allowance, meaning that some people are cut off halfway through their studies. And all this means that it's even harder for poor people to get higher education, so it's harder to get out of the poverty cycle.

As well as this, he's selling huge state assets, kicking poor people out of their houses, increasing tax on children who have after-school jobs, all while giving $2billion of tax cuts to the top 10% of earners in New Zealand.

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