@MYOS1634 - If you do a quick google search, you will find that the point that college tuition started to increase at a rate faster than inflation was the early 1980’s. There have been numerous articles and papers written about this issue in the 1990’s. The 2008 recession may have spiked tuition, but this has been a multi-generational trend.
The current economy is doing well in terms of unemployment rates, but in most other measures it is a very weak recovery with poor wage growth and lousy workforce participation rates, but given the economic policies we have in place, that is it not unexpected.