This is what most anti-OWS types don't understand; it is not 10,000 jobless recent grads individually complaining about their predicament. It is rather a collection of 10,000 of those people complaining that there are 10,000 people in the same boat. In other words they are complaining that their issue is becoming a pandemic problem and affecting so many right now....So, what can be done from a national policy standpoint to alleviate that pressure? These OWS people are not all a bunch of idiot hippies. The movement was born from many people realizing that many people are facing the same problem. MASSIVE debt with no ability to pay it off. They didn't plan poorly, they didn't underestimate the risk they were taking. They might have been pushed into this model of institutionalized learning accompanied with future debt, but they still knew it was happening. What CHANGED is the job market. Too many people going to school, because the schools do a really good job marketing their service, and now not enough jobs to support those newly graduated.
This comment is much more germain to the conversation: The schools are raising tution to ridiculous levels because the states are cutting off funding sources that had overflowed with money during the good years of the wartime, tech, and housing booms. Blame the university chancellors who couldn't see past their noses to realize that the meteroic rise in the economy wasn't going to last forever. They should not have been racheting up salaries and buying all kinds of new things for the university on credit. Those bills are coming due, those salaries are not going to reverse (because that almost never happens in America, layoffs happen instead). Now there is little to no state assistance to foot the bills. The schools fooled themselves into thinking the state funding would always be there. Now states like Illinois are saying, "you really are a for profit business, who are you kidding. Plan your budgets better and don't live off the social teet!"
As for those that think online courses should lower institutions's logistical costs conveniently ignore the costs of running an IT infrastructure that can support online courses. IT is NOT cheaper. The only saving is that one full time professor can now manage an extra class or two because they really can be in two places at once now...but they are stupid for doing it because they are getting paid the same to do more work.