Before 2007, when the economy was just sailing along, one of the most alarming financial trends was the cost of college education. Tuition was rising exponentially at many schools, and students were struggling with unheard-of levels of debt before they even graduated.

When the Great Recession hit around 2007, people had less money to spend on college. So naturally, tuition costs…climbed faster.

According to a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, tuition at four-year public universities shot up 28 percent between 2008 and 2015. It wasn’t as if these schools simply were trying to gouge their students. (Well, at least not entirely.) States were financially hurting as much as the rest of us were, and so they scaled back funding of their colleges and universities. Universities made their own shares of cuts, but any other funding shortfalls had to be made up with tuition hikes. (Fortune)