No it isn't. It's anchored by the market drivers, which are the ivys and the ivy-associated.

Jeff Selingo divided colleges and universities in the United States into two categories: Buyers and sellers. "Buyers" are colleges that have more applicants than slots and they can make you do whatever they want, proportional to their exclusivity. "Sellers" are colleges that have more slots than applicants and have to use their endowments to provide scholarships. Selingo broke down how much more you will earn from a "buyer" college than a "seller" college (on average, none) vs how much more the buyer colleges cost (no average, the price differential is insane).

Harvard and Yale have a sticker price that nobody pays. A preposterous, vanishing few get in on scholarship and the overwhelming majority get in because their parents donated to the school. $250k is the floor to get their attention. $2m or better is encouraged. And people pay it because if you used to play dolls with Tim Draper's daughter you get to launch Theranos without so much as a freshman's understanding of blood chemistry.

It's Mandarin squares all the way down and pretending there's an economic basis for it is bullshit. The SAT was created to keep Jews out of the Ivys - Selingo gets an admissions official at Yale to state, off the record, that the purpose of admissions at Yale is not to provide opportunity to people by making them Yale graduates but to ensure that only Yale graduates are admitted. And so long as the system is organized around corrosive bullshit that justifies the status quo the cost will increase proportionally to the Gini coefficient.