This is the main component of the increase. Wake's former provost did a bunch of academic research on this issue, and I had the opportunity to talk to her about it at an alumni event. She said the major factor in the ever increasing tuition prices across the country was due to this arms race among Universities to attract top students. And as long as other schools kept increasing their facilities, amenities, and tuition rates, Wake would have no choice but to follow suit if we didn't want to be left behind.
Another thing working against Wake that people seem to forget is we have a much smaller endowment than many of our peer universities. While Wake's endowment at about $1.1B seems like a lot, when you compare it to the likes of Duke ($6.0B), ND ($6.9B), Vanderbilt ($3.7B), Emory ($5.8B), Rice ($4.8B), UVA ($5.1B), Wash U in St. Louis ($5.6B), and Johns Hopkins ($3.0B), WFU has a lot of less cash flow coming off our endowment each year that we can used to fund general operations. In order to try and keep up with these schools, that shortfall has to be made up through tuition. Because of this I don't think most of Wake's financial issues have as much to do with bloated administrative expenses, (because our peers schools have the same or more bureaucracies and high paid officials as we do), but more to do with the Reynolds family not giving us as much money as Bloomberg, Duke, Vanderbilit, and Woodruff did to their respective institutions. And until some rich alum like Charlie Ergen decides to give us a bunch of money, we're probably going to be at a disadvantage for the foreseeable future.