The bloat was a result of withdrawing government funding / oversight and replacing them with student loans.
Looking like the DMV was no longer accepted as you needed to actually attract students, which means supporting an ever wider array of different things. Daycare, job placement, etc etc individually get tacked on and before you know it administrative overhead has gone wild.
You see similar effects with housing where people buying stuff with major loans are simply less cost conscious. Saving even 1,000$ on a kitchen is a big deal for most people if you need to write a check for it today, split it over 30 years and suddenly it seems largely irrelevant.
Looking like the DMV was no longer accepted as you needed to actually attract students, which means supporting an ever wider array of different things. Daycare, job placement, etc etc individually get tacked on and before you know it administrative overhead has gone wild.
You see similar effects with housing where people buying stuff with major loans are simply less cost conscious. Saving even 1,000$ on a kitchen is a big deal for most people if you need to write a check for it today, split it over 30 years and suddenly it seems largely irrelevant.