Colleges increase tuition even more, because they know financial aid can cover the difference.

Inside Higher Ed reports.

Study: Increased student aid, not faculty salaries, drives tuition up

College tuition has risen too quickly, and debt is unmanageable for increasing numbers of students; that much is clear. But to contain college prices, education leaders will need to answer a contentious question: Why does the price keep rising?

Higher education’s critics tend to blame high prices on overpaid professors or fancy climbing walls. At public colleges, lobbyists tend to blame reductions in state support. But a new study places the blame elsewhere: the ready availability of federal student aid.

Student aid accounts for most of the tuition increases between 1987 and 2010, according to a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The more money students can borrow, the idea goes, the more colleges can charge.