This is a wholly erroneous and baseless article.

Tuition has not been on a "spiral" since 1980, it's been on a spiral since 1999, when Congress passed legislation that made defaulting on student loan debt fundamentally impossible. And prices are going up for two reasons:

1) ready access to loans that are impossible to default

2) Shrinking state budgets to cover public education

It's also worth noting that while prices must be published, discounts must not - something like 60% of students in public and private universities and colleges are paying less than the sticker price (in most cases, lots less). This is another reason why foreign enrollment is skyrocketing in US universities: foreign students pay full tuition.

The interesting thing is that most of the schools that were reasonably priced prior to to the bubble are scared as fuck about how much they've sunk into ridonkulous dorms and stupendously expensive athletic programs. They're all trying to figure out the best way to stay cost-conscious. My wife's alma mater eliminated Football. Most schools are pushing hard into a mixed-mode semi Khan Academy model whereby most of the lectures are online but the TA sections are offline. It radically reduces expenses; the difficulty is that the universities have so far been loath to pass those savings along to students.

Source: This book, which contains more information in any given chapter than several years' worth of Salon articles on the subject.