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Thanks to rapidly rising tuition costs, America has a $1.2 trillion student debt problem.

While income is distributed unequally in the country, what few people know is how much more unequally wealth, financial assets and inheritances are distributed. 

As the 2016 campaign begins to take shape, there have been strong signals that debt-free higher education is going to be a central policy flash point.

The skyrocketing price of college tuition at previously affordable state colleges and universities is a longstanding source of concern, especially for people graduating with mountains of student debt. People have many theories as to why this is happening: administrative bloat, too-high salaries for professors, or perhaps too many unnecessary new buildings.

As the glow of finally deciding on a college begins to wear off, many students and families must wrestle with how they’re going to pay for school. 

Public university students today pay $3,000 more in annual tuition than their counterparts a decade ago. 

Why that is depends on whom you ask. Some pundits like to blame administrative bloat or the construction boom. Within higher education, many cite the decline in state support.

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“[P]ublic higher education in this country no longer exists,” writes Hiltonsmith. “Because more than half of core educational expenses at ‘public’ 4-year universities are now funded through tuition, a private source of capital, they have effectively become subsidized private institutions.”

While higher education spending used to fluctuate with the economy and tanked during the recession, it has not rebounded as the economy regains strength.

New Demos Report Shows State Disinvestment in Public Higher Education is Driving Tuition Increases

Decreased State Funding is Responsible for Nearly 80 Percent of the Rise in Public Education Tuition

Recently, there has been much debate about the real cause of tuition increases, which have risen by nearly $3,000 at public four-year universities in the last decade alone. To meet these costs, U.S. students must take on crushing levels of debt just to access education that was readily affordable for previous generations.

When discussing race, the conservative argument is best expressed by the famous words of Chief Justice John Roberts: "The best way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." Translation: America has done bad things in its history, but those bad things are gone now, so we should move past those horrors and look forward.