High cost of College

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When I graduated (average time 4 years) from College in 1971 a state school was $1,700 state tuition, books, supplies, room and board. I took a job teaching for $7,100. I received my sons (average time in college 4.5 years) tuition bill today and the cost for state tuition, books, supplies, room and board will be about $13,000 per year. A starting teacher makes about $28,000 starting out. This means that college costs have gone up over 7 1/2 times while salaries have gone up almost 4 times. I had to work less than one year to pay for college while my children will have to work over two years to pay for their college. What has caused college costs to increase so much? The economic factors should have the same influence on costs and salaries. What has changes is the amount of money the Federal Government is paying to have students attend college and they just increased the amount of the Basic Pell Grant. It seems that what we are facing is higher costs = Higher Government money = higher costs. Colleges have no incentives to reduce costs because "big Brother" will give you more money. In a free market economy the increased costs would result in lower students which would force colleges to cut costs to get more students. Is this one area the Government could save some money?