Measuring college costs against median household wages (vs. CPI) is a much fairer way to include impacts of inflation. First off, college tuition is part of the CPI, so it's not really mathematically accurate to then discount it based on CPI increases: "College is a lot more expensive, but don't worry, everything is a lot more expensive!"
And if you look at any graph of college costs vs wages over the past 40 years or so, they have simply skyrocketed.
And if you look at any graph of college costs vs wages over the past 40 years or so, they have simply skyrocketed.