For the record, I’m not American nor live in the US, but I have a 19-year-old son who started attending the University of Chicago this year, studying economics. Just the tuition itself is $70k. My husband and I are lucky enough to be able to afford it - I still believe it’s an outrageous amount of money to attend college.
It’s an older chart but I have no reason not to think the trend it shows has reversed since 2012. Colleges pivoted really hard in the past 30 years to offering a lot more than just classes and a dorm to attract students. Non-teaching positions have more than doubled since than 70s to handle all the “bloat and bullshit” (one of my professor’s terms, a real old-school guy who hated modern academia) that that’s come along since.
Throw in the fact that federally secured loans means that almost any 18 year old can sign off on whatever the sticker price without much thought and you get those kinds of costs for some students