A group of Virginia auditors could save a lot of time and some money if they just contacted Professor Glenn Reynolds on the force that is driving up college costs.

Answer: Student Loans.

But, the team intends to go forward with their quest for more culprits.

At various times in the past few years, areas such as intercollegiate athletics, decreased state support, federal aid programs, the price of highly skilled labor and the growth of administrative bureaucracy — among others — have all come in for a share of the blame.

But sophisticated analyses of the revenues and costs associated with public higher education institutions have been few and far between, complicating efforts to control both cost (what institutions spend) and price (what colleges charge students). And that makes the initiative launched by Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, an oversight agency that evaluates other state agencies and programs, interesting.

Over the next two years, the commission, at the request of state lawmakers, plans to analyze in depth how expenses at the state’s public universities have changed over the past few decades, an endeavor that could result in new ways to control costs and prices, both in the state and nationwide. And the commission’s first report, released this month, hints at one area that will be explored in depth in subsequent reports — auxiliary services, including housing, dining and intercollegiate athletics.

“During the last decade, total spending per student (accounting for inflation) increased about 2 percent at Virginia’s six research institutions, and about 11 percent at Virginia’s other nine institutions,” the report states. “Spending on auxiliary enterprises funded by students was the largest driver of these spending increases. Auxiliary enterprise spending per student, after inflation, increased $821 at Virginia’s six research institutions and $906 at the other nine non-research institutions.”

That finding has the potential to play into an oft-repeated narrative about colleges spending their money on nonessential facilities and services — climbing walls, lazy rivers and lavish dorms — instead of classrooms and instructor salaries. The finding could be fodder for another round of political attacks on the state’s universities and could hinder their ability to raise revenues through increased state appropriations or tuition hikes.