State colleges in Tennessee have gone up over 400% in the last 20 years alone. I went to school from ‘91-’96 and borrowed a little over $10,000 for all four years (that was for tuition, books, AND gas for my car. Now tuition and books alone will cost you $8000 per semester.
Have you noticed how tuition has skyrocketed since the lottery scholarships? It’s my belief that the State colleges and universities are simply pricing college at what the market will bear. If most students are subsidized $1500 per semester, tuition pretty much has gone up by that amount. Instead of the lottery/Hope scholarships being a service to students to defray the cost of college, they are simply a means of funnelling more money into the universities (and to a lesser extent, community colleges) while the cost to the student remains unchanged.