I’d love to see a comparison of the NET cost of college (after scholarships) vs 40 or 50 years ago. Sure, the sticker price is higher, but if the college is just charging higher prices to the full pay families so they can give more aid to the needy ones, then rising tuition is a good thing (at least to me).
Also, using the government Cost of Living index isn’t really fair to the schools - the cost of things like science/computing labs has made educational inflation much higher than the general inflation rate over the past 50 years.