Re: But the elephant in the room...
I'll just note that the cost of higher education over here began rising faster than inflation (IIRC about 2X) in lockstep with the increase of availability of federal subsidies and loan guarantees. The outcome is that while higher education is much more available (many more colleges per capita), it is at most slightly more affordable than it was in the 1960s, while wages for faculty have stagnated - most uni's now have 80% or higher "part-time" faculty with much lower per-class pay, without hope for full time or benefits, much less tenure. At the same time, pay for college administrators has increased dramatically - at some uni's administrators are now paid five times what they were paid a decade or two ago. TL;DR - federal involvement has been of help mainly to bureaucrats.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
