College costs continued to rise, and did so in part because of ever increasing direct and indirect government subsidies. 

Couple this with 1971, the gutting of the manufacturing base, and the rise of the managerial class, and you have a bloated fiat system of higher education. 

Not only were the colleges and universities seeding the American workforce with the new managerial class, but their own hallowed halls as well, with ever growing administrative positions, chairs, and divisions—all without any real function in research or teaching, but a mandate to do something, anything in the realm of policy.