Higher Education Makes It Harder to Jump Up as an Adult

Having a four year college degree makes someone born into the bottom quintile of income three times more likely to climb all the way to the top as an adult. Average college tuition and fees have increased 1200% since 1980, while inflation is only going up 236%. So there's kind of this rule of thumb that tuition rates increase twice the general inflation rate,. They'll go up about 8% per year, and that means the cost of college doubles every nine years. That sounds pretty sustainable to me.