[poulsbohemian]

This is purely my unscientific, though information-based opinion... I graduated in 2000. Basically, an arms race started, as elite schools could afford to make it "free" to attend, others jacked up their tuition to become "elite" in their own way, online education was going to eat the bottom end (so to speak), and any college that wanted to stay in business had better ramp up their appeal. I think what you'll observe was beginning in about that time, there was a massive building boom, as each school tried to provide nicer dorms, facilities, etc in order to compete with other schools. Along with this was a significant boost in administrative overhead across schools, for reasons I've not quite understood - my guess is that in a drive to compete on quality, in came the middle management.