I'm from Slovenia where college is basically free of tuiton (but you need to rent a private appartment or pay something for living in the campus) and the trends aren't any better. In fact, they are worse. Since diplomas are relatively easy to obtain, we now have restaurant waiters with college degrees of almost any field. The only degree that still guarantees work in the field is the medical one. So basically we have a huge educational inflation.

What I think also goes into this equation is the fact that the population got a lot bigger in the last decades and people also live longer. There are 80-somethings still holding on to their jobs as doctors and professors here. America just elected a president of the same age, many senior government officials are just as old. WTF?