I paid the same amount for a quarter of community college as I did for a quarter of the University of Washington in 1999. The 4-years have gone up a batshit amount but community college isn't nearly as affordable as it was. More than that, the costs-benefits analysis on a college education have basically shifted to "if you can't afford grad school it'll take hella longer to amortize that degree" while Generation Z has watched their cousins and uncles blow a fuckton on degrees that they maybe didn't finish (Corinthian College etc) or didn't get them fucking anything.

Wanna see a hilarious article?

Recent film program graduates of Columbia University who took out federal student loans had a median debt of $181,000.

Yet two years after earning their master’s degrees, half of the borrowers were making less than $30,000 a year.

The Columbia program offers the most extreme example of how elite universities in recent years have awarded thousands of master’s degrees that don’t provide graduates enough early career earnings to begin paying down their federal student loans, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Education Department data.

I know a girl who graduated from Columbia Film. She's one of the richest people I've ever met. She went to Columbia because her parents insisted on an Ivy and she insisted on film school. Guaranteed - no one in her family has filled out a W2 at least two generations back.

When you see grad schools climbing? Know that it's the bored and wealthy.