The primary reason tuition has skyrocketed to absurd levels is because of the reliance upon third party funding.  If all or even most students had only their own money to use when shopping for a college, the financial landscape would look radically different.  Not much different than how the housing bubble was inflated by third parties loaning absurd amounts of money to individuals who had no hope of ever paying it back.

The notion that everyone must go to college, combined with loans that permit anyone to temporarily afford tuition they would otherwise never remotely consider, has driven faculty and administrator salaries and other expenditures ever skyward, as without facing the real limits on demand they have no incentive to control costs.  True demand at these price points is being distorted by the reliance upon risky loans.  The resulting bubble will most certainly burst, as even now the cost/benefit ratio of a college education is becoming pretty dicey for many.