The High Tuition Rates of Universities in the United States are Unjustifiable

I am going to start right away. Use the comment section for clarification of any kind if clarification is needed. My oppponent should prove that the rates are justified and I will prove that they are not justified. I think that anyone who has gone to college within the past five years, is presently going to college or who is considering colleges right now will understand where I am coming from. The average cost of tuition for public institutions rose 42% between 2000 and 2011 and private institutions saw a rise of 35% in the same period(1). Right now the average cost of tuition and fees at a private institution (note I am talking about not for profit insitutions) is $28,500(2). This does not even factor in living expenses, meaning room and board, meal plans and such. Now lets go back some thirty or so years to the eighties. The average tuition in the 1980-81 school year at all institutions was about $3,100(1). So basically, my issue is with what causes this extreme price hike between 1980 and now. Let's think about what paying for college really means. Who goes to college? People who want to learn something they didn't know before, in order to get a better or different career, or to just know more things in general. College and universities are the links that young people have to what we as a species have accomplished up until now. Universities serve to educate students about what they missed before they were born. Feel free to argue against that as well, perhaps that is wrong. However, based on the idea that univeristies serve as the database of human accomplishment then the cost of college means that the people who access the "database" are paying to know the accomplishments of the human race. To learn what we as a species have figured out thus far. Therefore, the primary group of people who will be paying for college are those who do not know all that the species has accomplished, primarily because we are simply too young to know it and haven't learned it yet. Ideally we shouldn't pay for college at all, but I understand that someone has to pay and that there is a cost to college itself. I am not arguing that. What I am arguing is that the price is overbearingly high. If you expect me, as a person who is 19 and clearly does not know everything our species has accomplished, place myself in $100,000 worth of debt just to CATCH UP you are out of your mind. (Just to be clear, I am in college and I am paying that price). Is that not inhibitory to people who cannot afford the price and still want to catch up on what the species knows? Granted, there are scholarships and financial aid available. But scholarships and financial aid only allow the prices to keep rising. As a society should we ask our young to take on a huge financial burden for the sole reason that they are young? Basically, college tuition rates are entrance fees that young people must pay to catch up on what the species knows. I know that there must be tuition for college to operate effectively, but when does that price get too high? I am saying that the price is too high now. Having endowments of more than $30 billion (3), like Harvard does, is unjustified for a not for profit institution. (1) http://nces.ed.gov... (2) http://www.collegedata.com... (3) http://daily.swarthmore.edu...